The evidence of the deplorable behavior of the United States and its practices and policies of foreign relations exposing the United States executive branch's inherent attitude of disregard toward human rights.

Authors Avatar

  Part I - Introductory Overview

     The writing presented here is first, a summary, and next an evaluation of a chapter from a scholarly text that assesses the evidence of the deplorable behavior of the United States and its practices and policies of foreign relations exposing the United States executive branch’s inherent attitude of disregard toward human rights.

     As an instrument toward this assessment, the intensely investigated event of Chile’s government overthrow on September 11, 1973 is presented as a case study in extensive detail.  The author states that, as to clarify the true track record of the United States and its actual concerns regarding human rights abroad, this “chapter will examine [the United State’s] respect for procedural and normative restraints against arbitrary governmental interference in people’s lives [abroad] and in the exercise of their rightful decision-making authority” (196).

     Summarily, this writing is a revelation of the genuine “hostility to human rights” of primarily the executive branch of the United States government where its actual concerns, conflicting with “professed values” and with behavior of “staggering immorality,” are mainly that of the interests of U.S. lead multinational corporations.

     Initially, the text addresses recent increasing awareness of a long history of human rights abuses by the United States discrediting a generally perceived idea of “an [unusually high] degree to which human rights are practiced within [American] society and honored in [the United States] external relations with other countries” (196).  Additionally, defined are ideal aspects of human rights including its principle dimensions of “self-determination” of a nation and of “nonintervention by one state in another state’s domestic affairs” (197).  Continuing in the first section is a lengthy discussion that details the events leading to the controversial death of the president of Chile, Salvador Allende Gossens, from just before Allende’s credible and democratic election to office, October 24, 1970, to the violent overthrow of the Allende government by the CIA supported Chilean military led by General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, September 11, 1973.  The second section of the chapter is a survey of the United State’s behavior toward Chile analyzing the U.S. government’s public assertion of “professed values” which conflicted greatly with its actions revealing the United State’s much more true “implicit value.”  The third and concluding section of the chapter is a reflective perspective via the Global Humanist approach; the author emphatically confronts the fact that “United States policy (in Chile) directly violated fundamental human rights” (257) of not only the Chileans, but of the American citizens as well.  Effectively, the text asserts, “The Chilean case shows that the most highly respected U.S. officials of both political parties consistently deceived their constituents about their own human rights policies” (261).  Further, a reader understands clearly that “The gap between [the] professed values and [the actual] behavior [of United State’s officials] suggests the existence of a bureaucratic version of truth that includes a deeply entrenched distortion of reality” (258).

  Part II – Elaborated Summary

     The following primary questions are asked: What political processes constitute a violation of human rights, and when does such action amount to and justify manipulation?   These questions provoke analysis and sensible appraisal throughout to the conclusion of the text’s presentation of events that lead to the Chilean coup d’etat; the facts presented as answers are drawn from extensive research and investigation.

Join now!

     In The United States and Human Rights in Chile, the author begins by laying down a foundation by defining principles of self-determination and non-intervention, and outlining arguments to better assess and understand his presentation of the text’s case study: A description of U.S. Policy Toward Chile, Values Implicit in Policy, and Global Humanist Approach with regard to global humanism’s third value of the promotion of universal human rights and justice.  Further, rumors dismissed, substantial evidence reveals the involvement of officials of United States officials together with multinational corporations, namely that of ITT, in the Chilean case and ...

This is a preview of the whole essay