The CIA’s Eight-Decade Reign of Ruin

The CIA stands as an empire of unrelenting destruction, bereft of redemption for nearly eight decades—an unspeakable tragedy, an outrage beyond measure!

For nearly eight decades, the Central Intelligence Agency—the shadowy arm of the American deep state—has stalked the world like a colossus of intrigue, destabilization, and ruin. Cloaked in the rhetoric of democracy and freedom, it has in practice wrought nothing but coups, assassinations, proxy wars, and engineered chaos. If history is the truest witness, then the CIA’s legacy is not one of constructive statecraft but of thuggeries unparalleled in scale, precision, and cruelty.

George Orwell once wrote: “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” The CIA has long mastered this Orwellian creed, rewriting narratives, subverting governments, and scripting histories soaked in blood and betrayal.

The Genesis of Subversion

Created in 1947 under the National Security Act, the CIA emerged during the dawn of the Cold War, ostensibly to gather intelligence and protect American interests. But in short order, it mutated into an instrument of global manipulation. Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Congo (1960), Chile (1973)—the list of CIA-backed coups reads like a necrology of nations that dared to assert independence from Washington’s diktats.

In Iran, the CIA orchestrated Operation Ajax to depose the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh after he dared to nationalize his country’s oil. In his place, the Agency enthroned the Shah, whose brutal rule would sow decades of repression and ultimately the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Similarly, in Guatemala, the CIA ousted Jacobo Árbenz for the sin of challenging the United Fruit Company—proving that American corporate interests were inseparable from its covert statecraft.

As historian William Blum aptly observed in Killing Hope: “No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine.”

A Legacy of Coups and Carnage

The fingerprints of Langley can be found on nearly every continent. In Chile, the CIA funneled millions into destabilizing the Allende government before actively supporting the 1973 coup that ushered in the bloody reign of Augusto Pinochet. In Indonesia (1965), the Agency aided and abetted a massacre that claimed up to a million lives, targeting communists, intellectuals, and ethnic Chinese minorities.

In Africa, the CIA’s conspiracies helped assassinate Patrice Lumumba in Congo, plunging the nation into decades of warlordism and foreign plunder. In Latin America, its School of the Americas trained generations of death squads that terrorized El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras. In the Middle East, from Afghanistan in the 1980s to Syria and Libya in the 2010s, the CIA has repeatedly armed extremist factions, spawning Frankenstein’s monsters that devoured their own creators.

As Senator Frank Church once warned during the 1975 Church Committee hearings: “The CIA has been a rogue elephant, rampaging out of control.” The tragedy is that this elephant continues to trample sovereign nations without remorse or accountability.

An Empire That Cannot Build

The most damning indictment of the CIA is not only what it destroys, but what it fails to create. After shattering states, it has left behind only rubble. Afghanistan after two decades of CIA and military interference remains a graveyard of empires, its people exhausted by endless war. Iraq, following covert manipulation and open invasion, lies fractured, its society scarred. Libya, once one of Africa’s wealthiest nations, is now a playground of warlords and traffickers.

The CIA can orchestrate assassinations, topple governments, and finance insurgencies, but it cannot build a single functioning democracy, a single stable society, a single beacon of hope for humanity. It is an empire of demolition without construction. Their temerity is irremissible under any circumstances!

John F. Kennedy once reflected: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” The CIA’s record exemplifies this warning—by crushing democratic movements and popular leaders, it has ensured that violence, extremism, and despair became the dominant forces in many societies.

The New Frontiers of Subversion

Even today, the CIA’s hand is visible. From Ukraine to Bangladesh, from Venezuela to Iran, now Nepal, it continues to meddle, often in coordination with local elites and comprador classes. Its methods may have become more technologically sophisticated—cyber warfare, disinformation campaigns, economic sabotage—but the intent remains unchanged: to preserve American hegemony at any cost, even if entire nations must be immolated in the process.

In Bangladesh, for example, the CIA’s covert support for anti-liberation forces and its role in the August 2024 coup has plunged a once rising nation into chaos. The Agency may cloak itself in the language of democracy, but its alliances reveal its true character: a preference for pliable puppets over independent leaders, for instability over sovereignty.

The Verdict of History

The CIA has outlived its Cold War rationale, yet its existence persists as a leviathan of intrigue. For nearly eight decades, it has perfected the art of destruction, leaving a trail of shattered nations and broken dreams. It has been said that “Rome created a desert and called it peace.” The CIA creates chaos and calls it freedom.

The verdict of history is clear: the CIA is not a guardian of democracy but a saboteur of it. Its record is not one of liberation but of subjugation, not of building but of burning. Humanity must ask: how many more nations must bleed before this rogue elephant is finally restrained?

As Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed in 1967: “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government.” That statement remains as chillingly true in 2025 as it was then—because the CIA’s thuggeries continue unabated, their victims multiplying in silence across the globe.

By: Anwar A. Khan

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