TEHRAN - The U.S. likes to present itself as a defender of democracy, freedom, and human rights. Washington’s proclamations have been so persistent and widespread that it has managed to engrave the altruistic image it desires in the minds of millions of people around the world. 

The official website of the U.S. Department of State says: “Promoting freedom and democracy and protecting human rights around the world are central to U.S. foreign policy”. But the country has proved to be hypocritical in its actions enough times that many have in the meanwhile, started to question the truthfulness of American slogans.
The very first antithesis to Washington’s claims of being a supporter of democracy dates back to 1953 when the U.S. planned and executed a coup to topple Mohammad Mosaddegh, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran.

Mosaddegh had entered a fray with the British government over the possession of Iran’s oil. The British established a large oil company in 1909 to exploit the resources of the oil field they had discovered in southern Iran. When the Iranian Prime Minister moved to nationalize the oil, he was met with firm resistance from the UK which was so steel-willed in its illegal acts that it imposed an international boycott on the Iranian oil and tried to saddle the country with crippling financial sanctions. It is important to note that by the time Mosaddegh had made the decision, more than 80 percent of Europe’s oil was getting produced from Iran’s stolen resources. That’s also when the editors of the New York Times had started to compare Mosaddegh to Stalin and Hitler. 
When the U.S. realized Iran could start selling oil to the Soviet Union due to pressure from the UK, it colluded with the British to get rid of Mosaddegh’s government. Washington hired two of the biggest gangsters in Tehran to mobilize violent and deadly protests against the Iranian Prime Minister. It then bribed military men, officials, and some clergy to help strengthen the Shah’s regime to topple Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh was overthrown during a coup on August 19, 1953 through an operation dubbed Ajax by Americans and Boot by the British. He was jailed and then put under house arrest shortly after. 
The U.S. admitted CIA’s undeniable role in the 28 Mordad coup d'état in 2013 by releasing documents that said the coup had been carried out "as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government".

What happened in Iran was Washington’s first intervention in the internal affairs of other countries since the Second World War. Some reports suggest that the U.S. has helped orchestrate at least 50 other coups in different countries ever since.

How else does the U.S. help defend human rights?

Some other ways the U.S. likes to support "democracy" include color revolutions, sanctions, and propaganda. But its favorite of them all has got to be direct military action. The U.S. has caused some of the most devastating tragedies to unfold in the modern world.

Iraq
Washington, by claiming that the Iraqi government possesses weapons of mass destruction, launched a full-scale war against Iraq in March 2003.  It bombed all the main infrastructures of the country and wreaked havoc across the entire nation. It was of course revealed that there were no weapons of mass destruction to begin with. But the U.S. claimed it wanted to protect Iraqi people from their government before proceeding to kill an estimated number of two million people during its full decade-long occupation of the country. Washington’s occupation still somehow lives on as Iraq’s own officials have been sidestepped by the U.S. numerous times. 

Afghanistan

To counter the Soviet Union’s influence in Afghanistan, Washington helped empower a group of militants known as the Mujahedeen. Afghan Mujahedeen formed the Taliban which was later accused of helping a group of Saudi Arabian terrorists orchestrate the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to topple the Taliban only to give them back the country’s reign 20 years later.  At least 70,000 Afghan civilians were killed as a direct result of war while thousands of others died due to famine and insufficient health services. Afghanistan grapples with insecurity and various shortages to this day all because the U.S. decided to “save” people from terrorism. 

Libya

The Obama administration essentially wracked Libya for the generations to come. The 2011 military intervention by NATO, which happened after a civil war instigated by the West, took place because the U.S. decided to “enforce a no-fly zone and protect civilians in Libya” as quoted by Hilary Clinton, the then Secretary of State. The intervention, which has been called “Obama’s biggest mistake”, undermined the rules and security in Libya. Different parts of the country are now being controlled by different groups and people are stuck in an unending cycle of poverty and insecurity many of them see no way out of.

Syria

During the 12 years of fighting in Syria which persists in some areas to this day, half a million people died, millions got displaced, and cities got reduced to rubbles across the Arab nation. The U.S.-instigated civil war in Syria and its subsequent bombing of the country helped create the most notorious terror group in history, Daesh. The U.S. once again proved its supportive relationship with terrorists when it assassinated Iran’s anti-terror icon, General Qassem Soleimani, in 2020. As the IRGC Quds Force chief, he spearheaded Iran’s fight against Daesh terrorists.

There are numerous other instances of how the U.S. has acted in complete opposition to its mottos of democracy, freedom and human rights. When the country cannot exploit the United Nations and other international organizations that it largely controls, it very simply resorts to coups and military actions without caring a dime about democracy. It is important to note that people in most countries allied to the U.S. in West Asia, namely Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, and Bahrain, have never seen a ballot box up-close.