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My partner and I affirm [the topic, Resolved: In the United States, organized political lobbying does more harm than
good.]

To clarify, we define:

Organized political lobbying as, “[an organization that] to conduct[s] activities aimed at influencing public
officials and esp. members of a legislative body on legislation” from Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law1.

The dependent clause “in the US” modifies the independent clause “organized political lobbying does more harm than
good” while “more harm than good” is merely a result of the verb “does.” Thus we conclude that “in the US” only
modifies the noun “organized political lobbying.” So we debate about lobbying in the US, but ramifications outside of
the US are still relevant.

[Even if we accept it the other way, it only makes sense to talk about political lobbying in the US that could have
ramifications outside of the US. Interpreting it the other way would allow arguments about political lobbying outside
of the US affecting the US, which is less likely to happen.]

Our thesis is that political lobbying in the US has caused immense suffering and oppression in Central America. We
offer three contentions:

1. Guatemala suffered a CIA-backed coup d’état as a direct result of political lobbying in the US.
2. The coup d’état resulted in 40 years of suffering in Guatemala.
3. Similar destructive political lobbying still exists today.

First, political lobbying by the United Fruit Company convinced the Eisenhower administration to stage a coup d’état
in Guatemala as explained by Howard Hunt, the architect of the 1959 Guatemala coup, from a 1999 National Security
Archive interview2:
HH: I would say about a two-year period, from about 1951 or so until 1953, when the PB Success got going. Actually, I will admit that to 1952, because Bedell-Smith had to be convinced first of all, and as I've said in
previous writings, I always felt that in forming a task force to overthrow the communist government of Arbenz, that we did the right thing, but perhaps for the wrong reason - that reason being, I wanted it to be purely for
our national security and to bolster and revere the Monroe Doctrine; whereas, when I was finally called up from Mexico City to confer with Bedell-Smith and some of the other high-ranking members of our national

the reason that [the CIA was] they were having a change of heart was because Thomas
security apparatus, it turned out that

Corcoran, who was the rather [a] famous lobbyist and working for the United Fruit Company, had persuaded
Eisenhower and some of the other high dignitaries to take this matter under very close advisement and get going, do something about
[the communist government of Arbenz in Guatemala] it. So... and then I felt a little bit betrayed when I learned that, because I thought, "Hey, you know, I'm
working for the United States of America, I'm not a hireling for United Fruit." But I went ahead with my assigned tasks in any case, and if United Fruit benefited from it, that was part of the set game, I suppose you could
say.

This was due to Guatemala’s nationalization of its crops and United Fruit’s plantations, as evidenced by a 1954
TIME article3:

Guatemala's government grabbed 233,973 acres of the United Fruit Co.'s best banana
The Communists and agrarian reformers who run

reserve lands at Tiquisate last year, and blandly offered the company $594,572 in 25-year government bonds as payment. The company, which values the land at $15,854,849,
cried "confiscation," and asked the U.S. Government for help.

1
"lobbying." Def. 1a. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law. 7th ed. 2003.
2
Hunt, E. H. "Interview With E. Howard Hunt." Interview. National Security Archive. George Washington University, 21 Feb. 1999. Web. 28 Jan. 2010.
<http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-18/hunt1.html>.
3
"GUATEMALA: Square Deal Wanted." TIME 03 May 1954. TIME Magazine. Time Inc. Web. 28 Jan. 2010.
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Second, the coup d’état resulted in 40 years of suffering in Guatemala. Kate Doyle, director of the National Security
Archives, writes in 19994:

the CIA-sponsored military coup in 1954 was the poison arrow that pierced the heart of
Most historians now agree that

Guatemala's young democracy. Code-named "PBSUCCESS," the covert operation overthrew Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, the second legally elected president in Guatemalan history.

Over the next four decades, a succession of military rulers would wage counter-insurgency warfare that
also would shred the fabric of Guatemalan society. The violence [of government death squads] caused
the deaths and disappearances of more than 140,000 Guatemalans. Some human rights activists put the death toll as high as 250,000.

Human Rights Watch details a horrific incident told at a UN-sponsored truth commission in a 2003 article5:
In addition to the problems associated with common crime, Guatemala is still suffering the effects of an internal armed conflict that was, in some respects, the most brutal in the region during the last century. A UN
sponsored truth commission estimated that as many as 200,000 people were killed during the 36-year war that ended in 1996. Government forces were responsible for the vast majority of the killings. Their victims were

in the village of Las Dos Erres, Guatemalan soldiers

mostly unarmed civilians. Their methods were often extraordinarily cruel. To give just one example, in 1982,

killed over 160 civilians, burying some alive in the village well, killing infants by slamming their heads
against walls, keeping young women alive to be raped over the course of three days. This was not an
isolated incident. Rather it was one of over 400 massacres documented by the truth commission-some of which,
according to the commission, constituted "acts of genocide."

Third, political lobbying that leads to death and destruction continues to this day. Peter Chapman, a leading historian
on the United Fruit Company and the Guatemalan coup, writes in 20086:

We assume that
The key legacy of United Fruit is that we worry about multi-national corporations. What is the role of large US defence contractors in Iraq or the oil companies in Nigeria?

corporations would not engineer coups and invasions as United Fruit did. Then we learn of the aborted coup in
Equatorial Guinea in 2004, where individual adventurers attempted to seize power in the small, oil-rich
West African country imagining that governments and other interests would back them when presented with a fait accompli. This was much
the same with Sam Semurray's exploits alongside Lee Christmas and 'Machine-gun' Molony's in Honduras in 1911.

The most recent of companies lobbying for military action include Blackwater USA, the private mercenary
corporation that the US government had hired for contract work in Iraq. Blackwater hired law firm Womble Carlyle
Sandridge & Rice in January of 2009 to lobby the government for additional contracting. Blackwater has been alleged
to have killed innocent civilians in Baghdad, smuggled arms to Kurdish terrorist groups, and participated in
assassination programs.7

Mindless warfare, death, and destruction were all caused by a single company’s efforts to lobby the President to stage
a coup in a country that had just held its first democratic election. As the World Bank reports8 over 75% of
Guatemalans live below the poverty line, and that some 70% of children under the age of 5 are malnourished, the
harm organized political lobbying has done is blatantly revealed.

Efforts of the United Fruit Company that caused a genocide, the aborted 2004 coup in Equatorial Guinea, and the
actions of Blackwater USA remind us that political lobbying does more harm than good, and thus you affirm.

4
Doyle, Kate. "Guatemala -- 1954: Behind the CIA's Coup." The Consortium. Consortium News. Web. 28 Jan. 2010.
5
Wilkinson, Daniel. "Guatemala: A Human Rights Update." Human Rights Watch. 16 Oct. 2003. Web. 28 Jan. 2010. <http://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/americas/guatemala101603.htm>.
6
Chapman, Peter. Bananas!: How The United Fruit Company Shaped the World. New York: Canongate U.S., 2008. Print.
7
New York Times, The. Blackwater Fiasco. 19 Oct 2009. Web. 28 Jan. 2010.
8
"Guatemala - Improving Health and Nutrition of Mothers and Young Children in Guatemala."The World Bank. Web. 29 Jan. 2010.

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