Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I thank you, a Chathaoirligh, I was feeling very threatened. I refer to the statements that America is our closest friend and is the champion of freedom in the world. Senator Norris stated previously that America subverted democracy in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s. In the 1960s it subverted democracy in Chile, in the 1970s it participated in the subversion of democracy all over South America, while in the 1980s it funded brutal right-wing death squads throughout central America. None of this is disputed. Between 1946 and 1990, where did the US use its influence to subvert dictatorships? Yet it was busily subverting fledgling democracies all over the world.

I have always believed in what the US claims to believe in, which is freedom, liberalism and a liberal social market economy. I believed this before the Soviet Union collapsed and even more so since. However, the US, as a force in the world, represents the opposite of what it claims to stand for and that is the source of most of the world's hostility to that country. It is the perception that what it claims to stand for is the antithesis of what it does. Ask the peoples of Central America, of Latin America, of many countries in Africa. Ask the people of South Africa whose side America was on during the period of apartheid.