The United States’ stated foreign aid policies center mainly on rebuilding countries devastated by manmade or natural disasters and fighting disease and famine, as well as, under the Bush administration, helping spread democracy in the Middle East. But why then are many people around the world deeply suspicious of U.S. influence?

History reveals that U.S. aid has killed more people than it has helped, destroyed more countries than it has rebuilt and financed more weapons and violence than it has homes, vaccinations and relief workers. In Latin America, where president George W. Bush recently announced plans to direct millions in aid to curb the poverty-related problems that have “led some to question the value of democracy,” U.S. aid found its way into the hands of some of the most atrocious governments of the last half-century.

U.S. involvement in Guatemala is a prime example of the destructive power of U.S. foreign aid. In 1951, president Jacobo Arbenz proposed an agrarian reform program to benefit the roughly 80 percent of the population living in virtual slavery. Concern for human rights would have meant supporting Arbenz’s program. But instead, Washington supplied arms, training and even troops to the dissenting force. Even though Arbenz had consistently sided with the U.S on issues of “Soviet imperialism,” the Eisenhower Administration opposed Arbenz to counter “the communist dictatorship” establishing “an outpost on this continent to the detriment of all the American nations.” A better explanation is that most of the land Arbenz wanted to expropriate belonged to the United Fruit Company, a colossal corporation with extensive financial ties to the United States. Eisenhower’s reaction to the right-wing coup in 1954 is revealing; he ignored the mass arrests, murders of suspected communists and the illegalization of all opposition media that ensued for decades afterward.

The U.S.-backed coup of 1973 in Chile illustrates a chilling relationship between foreign aid, human rights and business. In November 1970 Salvador Allende swept into power under a ticket for improved education, health care and other social programs, which he planned to pay for by nationalizing some key industries owned mostly by U.S. investors. In response, the Nixon Administration cut off nearly all government assistance programs and suspended loans. Chile’s economy came to a standstill. Buses and taxis stopped running for lack of spare parts, factories closed down and food shortages increased. Public discontent flared into protest, and Allende struggled to implement his progressive programs. After the Pinochet junta toppled Allende in 1973, despite the mass executions and other human rights violations that took place under the new regime, the United States promptly restored assistance to Chile. Washington was clearly more concerned with securing business investments than with advancing human rights.

The United States also intervened in Nicaragua in the 1980s. The Sandinista National Liberation Front, a revolutionary group, ousted a repressive, murderous, but business-friendly dynasty to take control of Nicaragua in 1979 under a banner of social reform. The U.S.-sponsored Contra opposition force — Reagan’s “freedom fighters” — destroyed health centers, schools, agricultural cooperatives, community centers and other symbols of the Sandinistas’ social programs. People caught in their assaults were often tortured and killed.

The London Guardian reports the experiences of one survivor of a raid in Jinotega province: “Rosa had her breasts cut off. Then they (the Contras) cut into her chest and took out her heart. The men had their arms broken, their testicles cut off, and their eyes poked out.” The Nicaraguan government estimates the Contras murdered some 8,000 citizens by 1984. As the nation diverted resources toward the war and away from social programs, the peoples’ faith in the Sandinistas gradually eroded. Hoping to stop the violence, they voted out the Sandinistas in 1988. Washington’s influence once again ensured business a free hand by rolling back human rights advancements.

U.S. aid has and continues to assist maltreated people throughout the World. But is has also inflicted unforgivable horrors in the drive to secure and increase business opportunity across the globe.

Current suspicion of the Bush Administration’s goal to advance democracy in the Middle East is therefore not surprising. Fortunately, the government’s ability to conduct foreign operations hinges on popular domestic support. Opposition, whether through protest or votes, has in the past changed the course of foreign policy, and there is no reason to think that can’t happen again.