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However, the part about the US invasion of Panama, of Grenada, and Afghanistan (the last third of the book) took a tone that was very different from the first 2/3rds. The first two-thirds of the book established a great case for why imperialism never works. In the last third, the tone ALMOST (but not quite) shifted to, "but sometimes, it works out."
I've read a few other books about Panama, including Graham Greene's book about Noriega's mentor, and Noriega's biography written with a reporter whose name slips my mind, and the case for the US invasion appears much much more ambiguous in those books than the case Kinzer states in Overthrow (and some of the facts Kinzer cites are contradicted by evidence presented in the Noriega book).
Now, a much much more interesting book is Kinzer's book about the US involvement in Iran. It's the book-length argument of the single chapter on Iran in Overthrow, and you learn more interesting and broader lessons about US Imperialism in the narrower, more detailed book about Iran than you learn in Overthrow, which is a survey of all the US interventions beginning with Hawaii and ending with Iraq.
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