Controversy
After General Charles de Gaulle argued about the US within the NATO Alliance and following the unconditional support entrusted by the US Governments to dubious right-wing military regimes in the name of Communist Containment policy - such as the Spanish Franco and Portuguese Salazar's dictatorships or the Greek Regime of the Colonels, in the wake of the Vietnam War protests, democratic left-wing public opinion in the USA and in Europe raised the controversial question of the MAPs being used as instruments of some form of covert ultra-conservative political US imperialism. The quite enigmatic role played by the CIA within the frame of those programs also fed the controversy, which reached its peak with the overthrow and murder of Chilean President Salvador Allende after an alleged CIA-sponsored military coup in 1973 - a controversy still not closed.
For more details on this topic, see American Empire. For more details on this topic, see Oliver North.Read more about this topic: Mutual Defense Assistance Act
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)