Departures With Robert Amsterdam

In the 1950s and 1960s, the United States engaged in a relentless anticommunism crusade which included the sponsorship of mass killings, coups, and installations of authoritarian regimes across much of the global South, from Indonesia to Brazil. In his fascinating new book, "The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World," journalist and author Vincent Bevins explores some fascinating personal testimonials of survivors and their families, and studies how this pattern of conduct by the United States often resulted in structural, systemic defects in many of the countries which to this today continues to impede the consolidation of democracy and stability. Most Americans, and many in the media and pundit class, continue to overlook the human toll that it took for the United States to win the Cold War, and defer to an attitude of exceptionalism. Bevins argues that we need to overcome this and grapple with how our actions impacted these countries. "There's