Apathy and Opacity - Live Together in Perfect Catastrophy

Winston Churchill is credited with saying "Democracy is  the worst of all systems except for all the others". I would amend that to say "Democracy is the worst of all systems when you at the mercy of someone else's democracy".
The U.S. is certainly one of the most stable and successful democracies in the world. However, the U.S. is so powerful that it has had immeasurable power over other fledgling democracies.
The U.S. has been instrumental in ripping apart the democracies of:

Iran
Chile
Nicaragua
East Timor
Congo
etc

In truth, none this is particularly disputed, even by the U.S. government itself.
When Colin Powell (U.S. Secretary of State for George Bush) apologized for the U.S. involvement in the bloody coup which overthrew the democratic government of Chile  and replaced it with the brutal dictator Pinochet, it was headlines all over latin America but barely made a whisper in the U.S.
In each case of these countries, as a direct or indirect result, thousands to hundreds or thousands died.
The U.S. knew that the Shah of Iran was corrupt and brutal when they destabilized the democracy in Iran and replacing the democratic government with a demagogue. The backlash which brought in the current Republican Guard was a direct result of their interference.

More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat

What I have found strange about these stories about US dismantling of democracies is that they are largely undisputed, even when they have led to unmitigated disaster. In most of these stories the U.S. is clearly the bad guy motivated by all the wrong reasons. How would the middle east be today if the U.S. had supported the democracy in Iran rather than help destroying it? However, I would have thought that transparency in a democracy would have led to a public backlash in the U.S. against its leaders. It turns out that betting on the apathy of your own citizens towards foreigners is close to a sure bet. Especially if those foreigners look different and speak a different language. Some of these stories border on the bizarre.

Noriega was essentially a CIA sponsored spy in Panama and with the support of the U.S. rose through the ranks. Eventually, he because leader in Panama and ran a brutal regime funding himself with his private drug cartel. The U.S., after a few years, gave him multiple warnings that he was going too far. Noriega claimed that the U.S. was really angry with him because he would not support the U.S. in their overthrowing of the Nicaraguan government. Fast forward many years of brutality and the U.S. invades Panama, with many deaths, arrest Noriega and sets him up for trial for long known crimes committed BEFORE he went to Panama. In fact, Noriega claimed that he would expose the involvement of the U.S. in Panamanian affairs until the Florida court gave him a gag order which he obeyed, in return, one presumes, for his palatial "prison" lodgings in Florida.

As a U.S. citizen, I love the rights and safely being American affords me. However, if I were not American but instead brown and/or muslim and/or poor,  I would be terrified of the U.S. I don't mean to suggest that the U.S. is evil, but its seemingly well intended short term goals (protect the interests of U.S. people and companies/and historically-keep down the Red scare) can lead to outcomes that are often indistinguishable from acts of complete malice. This is by virtue of the complete apathy towards the collateral damage to the people in that country.

Even today, U.S. drones can kill 10 innocents and one suspected terrorist and there is no backlash in the U.S.. The backlash in the foreign country is completely ignored, even when the innocents killed far exceed the victims of terrorism in the United States.

The purpose of this article is not to rant against the U.S. as I most certainly don't think the U.S. is consciously evil. Instead, I wish to examine what structurally is broken that the U.S. makes such bad decisions that cause so much harm and, in many cases, work against its own interest. In this realm, I can only put forward my best guesses:

(1) Lack of guiding principals in treatment of non-US citizens in other countries. (i.e. No humanitarian rights or constitution given to non-citizens) so short term and short sighted goals dominate decisions. No privacy, right to trial, right to life, due process etc. For example, even outside of war, the U.S. can legally bomb from the sky, French people, Chinese people, Mexicans but not U.S. citizens, on fuzzy suspicion of terrorism with as many innocent deaths as felt "necessary" to hit the target. Even when there are some low level guiding principles (e.g. Geneva Convention, U.N. Declaration of Human Rights) the U.S. is under no obligation to follow them since there is no enforcement mechanism.

(2) Lack of transparency for major U.S. institutions (NSF/CIA etc) meaning that the press and public cannot get accurate facts about the real reasons and depth of actions. Would the U.S. public have reacted if they knew the CIA were hiring iranian thugs and mobsters to help overthrow the democratically elected government in Iran? I hope so. These facts were only officially released by the government last year (2013).

(3) Carte blanch to act due to the apathy of the average American citizen towards foreigners in other poor countries, even when most of the facts are exposed. Americans are the least travelled of people in the developed world. The U.S. is so vast that many don't see the need, whereas in Europe you may pass two countries on the way to work. The helps lead to an insular view of America as all news and opinions come from only one country and most Americans have never meet, let alone befriend, someone from a country that America plans to disrupt or invade.

Lack of transparency and public apathy gives the politicians a blank check for the foreseeable future.