I know the argument at the time was that Arbenz's policies leaned a bit too far to the Communist side for the United States's liking, but is there anything that could paint the U.S. in a good light in this operation? I feel like it's disengenous to paint them as entirely bad guys...there's gotta be something in their favor.
Operation PBHistory was put togrther after the coup essentially to try and unearth documentary evidence of some nasty Communist/Soviet conspiracy. They basically found nothing much of interest, Allen Dulles (CIA boss) called the documents found 'topical' and of low intelligence value.
No. There was no justification. A very abbreviated summary: The US saw Communists behind every tree. We were paranoid. The government was very liberal and the CIA feared they would go socialist. The United Fruit Company wanted to continue their business model which exploited the workers and the democratically elected government wanted to implement a minimum wage and work rules. So as has happened many times since, the US government sided with big business and got involved, putting a dictator in power. I'm sure our motives were pure in context of the times, but shortsighted. We needed to keep socialism out of the hemisphere, especially democratically elected socialists . . . Or communists, or liberals, . . .