Why Do They Hate Us?

And in the “What the hell?” category: Eduardo Galeano writes in Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent : “In the middle of the nineteenth century the filibusterer William Walker, operating on behalf of bankers Morgan and Garrison, invaded Central America at the head of a band of assassins. With the obliging support of the U.S. government, Walker robbed, killed, burned, and in successive expeditions proclaimed himself president of Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras. He restored slavery in the areas that suffered his devastating occupation, thus continuing his country’s philanthropic work in the states that had just been seized from Mexico. He was welcomed back to the United States as a national hero.”