# Who was or is "the Worst American"?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [May 30, 2005, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110 "2005-05-30T17:20:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 12
### Author:  [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2005, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/221 "2005-06-07T18:21:49Z")
> [@Shodan](#):
>
> Would you call the US overthrowing a brutal, murderous dictator who slaughters his own people an example of providing “stability”, and a good thing? Would you class a US president who did that as a good American, or a bad one?
It depends on several factors:
What government replaced the dictator?
Are the people formerly under the dictator better off?
Is the cost of the overthrow justified?
How many human lives were lost in the overthrow?
Was the overthrow the result of a legitimate use of force?
Applying these to Iraq I get:
Anarchy
Not Yet
No
Too Many
No
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### Author:  [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2005, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/222 "2005-06-07T18:37:18Z")
**Shodan** , too bad we weren’t doing that, but instead, supporting those dictators.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2005, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/223 "2005-06-07T21:27:51Z")
> [@Captain Amazing](#):
>
> Why is that to “no good purpose”, though? It seems like it’s for a very good purpose…to serve US geopolitical interests and/or US corporations’ business interests. Serving the national interests is the main goal of every nation’s foreign policy, and I don’t see what the problem is with us doing it. So, what’s wrong with that?
What’s wrong with it is that it does not serve the interests of the peoples of the countries in which we intervene. In short, it’s plain old might-makes-right imperialism. If you see nothing wrong with that, then you accept the ethics-free calculations of _realpolitik_ and we have no common ground for discussion.
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### Author:  [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2005, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/224 "2005-06-09T02:34:51Z")
> [@Beware of Doug](#):
>
> **Albert Lasker** , granddaddy of modern advertising, who was not only crucial in the election of Warren G. Harding (very possibly our worst President), but who, along with **Edward Bernays** , inventor of the science of public relations, rehabilitated the failing American Tobacco Company in the 1920s by building Lucky Strike into a superbrand. Media scholar Erik Barnouw wrote that Lasker and Bernays “worked as hard as anybody for nationwide cigarette addiction” - most pointedly by selling millions of women on the once unladylike habit.
I’m sure you know this, but for the benefit of anybody interested who doesn’t: Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud (and of his wife- Freud’s sister married his wife’s brother). Lucky for him, his parents moved to NYC in the 1890s; her sisters remained in Austria where they lived to be octogenarians only to die in the concentration camps. (Bernays lived to be 103.)
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### Author:  [@Hung\_Mung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hung_Mung)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2005, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/225 "2005-06-09T04:27:48Z")
I’m sticking to my guns. Richard Simmons wins.
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### Author:  [@seosamh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/seosamh)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2005, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/226 "2005-06-09T11:16:47Z")
Sorry, but I cannot be bothered to see if this bloke’s been mentioned already. My vote goes to Harry Truman, who was ultimately responsible for more deaths **in any one go** than anyone else, American or otherwise.
(Yes, I know the likes of Hitler and Stalin may have been responsible for more deaths but theirs took place over significant periods of time. Truman managed his 240,000 in just two hits.)
But please note that I am not implying any criminality on Truman’s part, nor do I ignore the claim that the deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually _saved_ a great number of lives by hastening WW2 to an end.
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### Author:  [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2005, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/227 "2005-06-09T11:25:32Z")
> [@seosamh](#):
>
> nor do I ignore the claim that the deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually _saved_ a great number of lives by hastening WW2 to an end.
You’re right not to ignore it, but don’t accept it as fact, either. See _The Decision to Use the Atomoc Bomb_, by Gar Alperovitz, for a cogent explanation of why its use did _not_ “save lives”.
Just further reinforcement for your choice of Harry Truman (though it is Sec. of State James Byrnes that is the worse villain, acc. to Alperovitz).
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### Author:  [@JXJohns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JXJohns)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2005, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/228 "2005-06-09T14:48:25Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#):
>
> You’re right not to ignore it, but don’t accept it as fact, either. See _The Decision to Use the Atomoc Bomb_, by Gar Alperovitz, for a cogent explanation of why its use did _not_ “save lives”.
But it did save **American** lives, which at the time was Truman’s main concern, and why I would not add him to this list.
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### Author:  [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2005, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/229 "2005-06-09T14:59:33Z")
> [@JXJohns](#):
>
> But it did save **American** lives, which at the time was Truman’s main concern, and why I would not add him to this list.
One can’t prove a counterfactual, but if you buy Alperovitz’s research and analysis, this simply isn’t so. To summarize, we need only have given assurance to Japan that the emperor could “remain” (which is in the end what happened anyway) and awaited thereaction of Russia’s invasion of Japanese-controlled Manchuria, and Japan would have surrendered with our neither having dropped the atomic bombs, nor having invaded the home islands with ground troops. But for some in gov’t close to Truman, passing up the opportunity to scare the Russians with our new toy was unthinkable.
And, as well, the army’s own estimates of likely American casualties in an invasion of the home islands were always much smaller than the hundreds of thousands we are familiar with from the popular press. Alperovitz devotes a chapter to the steady inflation of those casualty estimates in the months and years after Hiroshima.
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### Author:  [@Scott\_Plaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scott_Plaid)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2005, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/230 "2005-06-09T15:35:14Z")
> [@seosamh](#):
>
> Sorry, but I cannot be bothered to see if this bloke’s been mentioned already. My vote goes to Harry Truman, \
Grrrrr… :mad:
There are five pages in this thread. While I enjoyed reading them, I can understand that you may not have time. However, directly above the first post on each page, there are three buttons: Thread Tools, **Search this Thread** , and Display Modes . It takes me but a few second to type in truman and see…
an error message. Damnit. :smack: I am such a :wally .
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### Author:  [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2005, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/231 "2005-06-09T15:35:17Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> What’s wrong with it is that it does not serve the interests of the peoples of the countries in which we intervene. In short, it’s plain old might-makes-right imperialism. If you see nothing wrong with that, then you accept the ethics-free calculations of _realpolitik_ and we have no common ground for discussion.
Well, it can serve the interests of other countries, but I’m saying that US foreign policy needs to serve the interest of the US, because if the US government doesn’t look out for the interests of the US, who will? You seem to be suggesting that unless our foreign policy is entirely altruistic, we’re acting badly.
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### Author:  [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2005, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/232 "2005-06-09T15:41:33Z")
If I may add one thing…
In a footnote, Alperovitz even suggests that it is _possible_ that Truman’s use of the atomic bomb resulted in _more_ American casualties, not fewer. Why? Because the bomb wasn’t going to be ready until late July 1945 – but Truman could have responded to Japan’s surrender-terms feelers before that time, sparing the lives of American military personnel who died in the ineterim.
The idea that the main reason to use the bomb was to scare the Russians is reinforced by the fact that Truman didn’t want to meet Stalin until after the bomb had been tested – he would’t have known how hard a line to take with him otherwise – and so he delayed their meeting (with Churchill as well) for that extra month, using the lame excuse that he hed to stay in the U.S. until the end of the “fiscal year”.
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### Author:  [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2005, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/233 "2005-06-09T19:57:29Z")
> [@Captain Amazing](#):
>
> Well, it can serve the interests of other countries, but I’m saying that US foreign policy needs to serve the interest of the US, because if the US government doesn’t look out for the interests of the US, who will? You seem to be suggesting that unless our foreign policy is entirely altruistic, we’re acting badly.
There’s a difference between not acting entirely altruistically and deliberately destabilizing a region, resulting in the deaths of thousands. Or overthrowing a government we don’t like that treats its citizens humanely and then installing a government that routinely employs the use of extrajudicial death squads and torture.
I take it you have no moral problems with the US government’s role in Pinochet’s rise or the overthrow of the Arbenz government in Guatemala?
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### Author:  [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2005, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/234 "2005-06-09T21:15:53Z")
> [@Captain Amazing](#):
>
> Well, it can serve the interests of other countries, but I’m saying that US foreign policy needs to serve the interest of the US, because if the US government doesn’t look out for the interests of the US, who will? You seem to be suggesting that unless our foreign policy is entirely altruistic, we’re acting badly.
and before…
> [@Captain Amazing](#):
>
> They were poor, small, weak, and unstable, and they needed a larger, stronger power to protect them both from the outside world and from their own weakness.
Is this the pit?
What a pity…
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### Author:  [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2005, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/235 "2005-06-09T23:16:42Z")
> [@Latro](#):
>
> Is this the pit?
>
> What a pity…
If you’d like to pit me, feel free. But both things I said were true…the countries of Latin America were poor, and unstable, and needed a larger power to protect them, and they clearly fell under our sphere of influence. And at the same time, we were, and still are, and always will be, concerned about our wellbeing as a nation, and if these were nations that provided opportunities…raw materials for American factories, markets for American goods, why not take advantage of these opportnities. If we failed to, another nation would.
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### Author:  [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2005, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/236 "2005-06-10T01:04:09Z")
> [@Captain Amazing](#):
>
> If you’d like to pit me, feel free. But both things I said were true…the countries of Latin America were poor, and unstable, and needed a larger power to protect them, and they clearly fell under our sphere of influence.
Except, we didn’t really protect them, now did we? It’s like being saved from being raped, then having the guy who did the saving bend you over and rape you himself. We “protected” them from having Europeans install governments that were friendly to them, and instead, we just did the same thing and wound up destabilizing entire regions, resulting in thousands upon thousands killed.
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### Author:  [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2005, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/237 "2005-06-10T13:55:31Z")
> [@Neurotik](#):
>
> We “protected” them from having Europeans install governments that were friendly to them, and instead, we just did the same thing and wound up destabilizing entire regions, resulting in thousands upon thousands killed.
Aren’t you exagerating just a little bit? The only place the “thousands upon thousands” line would apply would be Mexico, maybe, but that was mainly the stuff that Villa and Huerta were doing to each other, and not what we were doing.
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### Author:  [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2005, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/238 "2005-06-10T18:23:13Z")
> [@Captain Amazing](#):
>
> Aren’t you exagerating just a little bit? The only place the “thousands upon thousands” line would apply would be Mexico, maybe, but that was mainly the stuff that Villa and Huerta were doing to each other, and not what we were doing.
“Thousands and thousands” is a perfect description of the Guatemalans killed (often entire families massacred), especially in indigenous areas, during their long civil war following the U.S. government’s intervention under Eisenhower, which installed a rightist military regime soon after a leftist gov’t was elected. The U.S. wasn’t _entirely_ responsible for those deaths, but many would argue that it was at least _partly_ responsible for them.
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### Author:  [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2005, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/239 "2005-06-10T18:43:02Z")
> [@Captain Amazing](#):
>
> Aren’t you exagerating just a little bit? The only place the “thousands upon thousands” line would apply would be Mexico, maybe, but that was mainly the stuff that Villa and Huerta were doing to each other, and not what we were doing.
No. I’m not exaggerating. The Guatemalan civil war was a direct result of the US overthrowing a democratic government and trying to install a military dictatorship. That lasted 40 years and killed 150,000 people with another 50,000 missing.
Then there was Operation Condor, planned and carried out by US installed dictators with assistance from US intelligence, that resulted in the torture and murder of 15,000-30,000 people.
Among many others.
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### Author:  [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2005, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-or-is-the-worst-american/306110/240 "2005-06-10T18:48:32Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#):
>
> “Thousands and thousands” is a perfect description of the Guatemalans killed (often entire families massacred), especially in indigenous areas, during their long civil war following the U.S. government’s intervention under Eisenhower, which installed a rightist military regime soon after a leftist gov’t was elected.
Yes, it is, but I was talking about the Roosevelt Corollary, which wasn’t US foreign policy any longer by the time of the Eisenhower administration. (US foreign policy during the Eisenhower administration, and throughout the Cold War tended to be of the “Find an anti-communist strongman and back him no matter what he does” variety.)
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