Blood on Our Hands

**TLDR** – Our intelligence services have long been a disaster, and as much as I hate to say it, the incoming leadership, despite appearing inept and unqualified, probably can’t do much worse.

We can remember the total and absolute intelligence failures leading up to the Iraq war. But I guess I didn’t realize how much we used our clandestine services as a tool to bend the world order to our benefit. And what a horrible job we did at it. It’s a feature, not a bug.

All the gory details of our inept efforts, from Korea, the Cold War, Vietnam, and the Banana Republic wars, are documented in Tim Weiner’s 2007 National Book Award-winning "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA." Forget Zero Dark Thirty, think Dumb and Dumber. Forget nation-building. From post-WW2 through Iraq, destabilizing and supporting the overthrow of governments worldwide was our MO. And did I mention how horrible we were at it? It’s worth the read.

But that is not the point of this post. I was confronted firsthand with our handiwork when, on a recent trip to Santiago, Chile, I made a point to visit the Memory and Human Rights Museum that commemorates the victims of human rights violations committed in Chile during the last Chilean military dictatorship (1973-1990). The blood of the 3,200 people who disappeared and the 30,000 who were tortured during the Pinochet regime is on our hands. The United States played a significant role in destabilizing Salvador Allende's government in Chile during the early 1970s by imposing economic sanctions, covert operations of the CIA included funding opposition groups, spreading propaganda, and supporting strikes and protests and last, support to the Chilean military, which eventually led to the coup that overthrew Allende on September 11, 1973 . And there on display at the museum were the receipts. All because Allende leaned a bit too left.

For the first time abroad, I was embarrassed to be an American. That, and Hoka shoes and pork pie hats.

If they DOGE the CIA out of existence, I will neither feel less safe nor sorry.