Carter was Right

Great Debates
21

This site address your point here.

To my knowledge the “Republican-backed and owned” newspapers weren’t supporting armed aggression against the US during the Vietnam War. Their financial support was not coming from the North Vietnamese, IIRC. I’m not aware of any “Democratic newspapers” receiving funding from Saddam, either. The fact remains, La Prensa was receiving funds from the US government, the same government attacking Nicaragua with former members of Somoza’s despised national guard. .

Which is testament to the strength of institutions created under the Sandinistas, who still wield considerable influence. As pointed out, Ortega stepped aside when he was defeated, despite the largely Sandinista-controlled military. This alone makes them more democratic than most of the governments the U.S. has supported in the region.

22

Indeed, Carter DID help set up the election that Chamorro won.

23

I was thinking of John Corrado’s intelligent post, e.g., where he said, “I question exactly how much of our Middle East policy would have changed had we been “more” focused upon human rights. Israel still has the best record of any of the Middle Eastern countries, meaning we would still have funded them heavily as the bastion of human rights in the area. Of course, we would have pressured them to enter talks with the PLO and set up an independent Palestine, neither of which actually occured in the 80’s or 90’s. Oh, no, wait, it did, with George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton both pushing Israel to make concessions.”

Here are my own reasons for disliking JDM’s proposition.

– We don’t even know who was behind the attack
– We don’t know the reason for the attack… (E.g., it might have been financial, or to deter us from supporting Israel, or to deter us from getting involved in Iraq, or something totally unknown, etc.)
– There’s no evidence that Bin Laden’s or Saddam’s feelings would have been different had we behaved with greater human rights.
– Bin Laden and Saddam have no love for human rights. It’s equally plausible that they hate us because we behaved with too much human rights

Other people offer their own self-serving reasons why these groups hate Americans, e.g.

– Anti-Semites argue that the cause is America’s support for Israel and tolerance of Jews. (My friend’s young daughter in suburban NJ heard as schoolmate blame the Jews.)
– Militarists argue that the cause is our kindness – not wiping out the Saddam Hussein government by force when we had the chance.
– Anti-communists argue that it’s the Russians’ fault (This was an editorial in today’s Wall St Journal)
– I haven’t seen the claim made, but homophobes could argue that they hate us because of our tolerance for gays.
– Similarly I could imagine a sexist argue that they hate us because we allow women to go around without veils, to drive to vote, etc.

In my opinion, these are all bull. The reason they hate us has nothing to do with US and everything to do with THEM.

The repulsive Jerry Falwell effectively claimed that the terrorists were agents of God, punishing us for sin. The others are not as bad, but it seems to me that they’re somewhere on that wavelength. Of course, each group defines “sin” in its own way.

24

december, the ultimate homophobe Fred Phelps said exactly what what you mentioned about blaming it on gays, although he used terms that are quite imflammatory.

I heard from one of my teachers long ago that the Iranian students, who hated godless communism as much as or even more than they hated the Western culture, stormed the then-USSR embassy at the same time they took over the US Embassy. He went on to say that the USSR threatened the new Iranian government with nuclear bombs, which prompted the students to release those hostages. I don’t have independent confirmation of it.

25

The site contains absolutely nothing about the suppression of La Prensa. It does not address my point.

Although the source hardly seems to be unbiased, it claims that the election itself was not rigged along Soviet lines; opposition parties were allowed to run. The Sandinistas were simply allowed a monopoly of the print media on demand.

You claimed the election was free and fair, despite La Prensa being closed down at will whenever the Sandinistas ordered it. You still have not justified that claim. No matter how many excuses you produce for closing La Prensa, that does not make the election free and fair.

The Sandinistas used their foreign support from Cuba and the Soviet Union to wage a war against their own people, as you may see at this site a record of the Sandinistas’ terrorist campaign against the Miskito Indians. Nevertheless, La Barricada, the Sandinistas’ newspaper, was never shut down either by the Ortega or the Chamorro government.

While Commander Zero was an ex-Somocista, by no means was the average Contra a Somocista thug. They recruited from everyone, especially those whose farms the Sandinistas were expropriating.

I do give Ortega credit for finally permitting a free election and honoring its results. We should not pretend, though, that it was unconditional; Chamorro’s people and Ortega’s reached an agreement that if the Sandinistas lost, power would nevertheless be shared, and the Sandinistas would be permitted to retain substantial control of some areas, including the army (when I was there, it was still under control of Humberto Ortega, Daniel’s brother). Although Ortega’s stepping aside in 1990 was more honorable than the actions of many other Latin American dictators, including those supported by the U.S., that hardly whitewashes the Sandinistas’ whole record.

Incidentally, while I believe the United States was on the right side during the Sandinista-Contra war, I by no means intend to defend or excuse America’s whole Latin American policy, which I agree was often indefensible. Our support for Pinochet and for the Guatemalan junta was morally wrong. Our support for Somoza was equally wrong, and not even justifiable pragmatically; by supporting that bloodthirsty tyrant, we increased the popularity of his Sandinista enemies and thus inadvertently contributed to the revolution that brought the Sandinistas to power. We brought about a similar unintended consequence in Cuba by supporting Batista, whose corruption and tyranny caused his victims to rally around Castro. Making friends of dictators can bring other dictators to power who are our enemies.

26

december - I have been reading some of the other threads that JDM started and mostly I found the points raised unsupportable. This thread, though, is different. The OP says only so much and stops where it should. I would go back and read it extremely carefully to make sure, but I gotta get some work done. Maybe later. I’m planning to write a good bit here already.

In the mean time, I don’t think it says that the terrorist attack wouldn’t have happened if Carter’s ideas had been implimented. It says only that the situation in Afghanistan would likely be better. Your dislikes of the propostion have very little to do with the proposition. The propostion is that we give aid only to governments that support human rights. The propostion will only in a small way address the ObL problem. It will instead work toward not having another ObL 20 years from now.

Also, the policy would definitely oppose any support of a splinter terrorist group that needed help to depose ObL as leader. This may be the most efficient way of killing ObL without putting American soldiers in the line of fire but, it is not the way to long term safety for our people.

What are you saying about the Israel issue? Are you saying that it is wrong to support Israel because a bunch of Muslims hate them? And hate us for it? I say that if we had been supporting human rights throughout the world the entire time, giving aid to all races, religions, and governments as long as human rights were supported, then the whole framework may have been different. At least we would have looked less hypocritical. If we’re giving aid someone who does not support human rights, let us stop. Israel support human rights, so let us continue to support them. If Palestine comes to uphold human rights equally with Israel, then I think we would have a much better chance at negotiating peace between them.

It is difficult to talk about ‘would have/could have’. Let us instead talk about what may be (though that may be even harder to talk about). Whatever we do, let us support human rights and not support anything less because it’s the right thing to do. And, because we won’t look like such hypocrits when we start attacking terrorists. Our actions in the world have not been consistant in this matter. Let us start a new consistency and stick to it so that the world knows where we stand. Let’s tell the world exactly what our requirements for our friendship are and let us base those requirements on human rights. Doesn’t this make sense to everyone?

Making allies who stand for policies you oppose is for governments who are in desperate need of allies. Though we can always use more allies, we have many already who DO support most of our policies. We are in a strong position and have been strong for a long time. It’s time for smaller, less powerful countries to give in to our desire to spread human rights throughout the world. I think most of our allies would agree and support us in this.

Do you fear that this policy will allow evil leaders to proclaim their support of human rights and then renege when they gain enough power? This is possible and we would want to attempt to put safeguards in place to prevent this, but we certainly shouldn’t support a revolution against a government that was already supporting human rights.

There is a lot of gray area where one government supports some human rights and another government supports others. Tough decisions would have to be made. Perhaps we need to make a list of human rights and support only governments that attempt to provide them all. A bit drastic though.

I’m trying to think of all the possible objections and come up with answers, but I’m afraid I’m not the right person to argue this any deeper than I already have. Maybe we could ask Mr. Carter what he thinks about this. I suspect he’d have some very good thoughts.

27

The question to ask, though, is whether the situation in other countries would be comparatively worse.

In the '80’s, we offered a great deal of money and support to various dictators and abusers of human rights. However, had we not given them money, the Soviet Union would have jumped in to either fund those dictators, or have their own dictators installed.

In the mid-to-late '90’s to now, we are closer to being in a power vacuum, and can- and should- build a foreign policy based upon human rights, because we no longer have countries able to step in and fund the countries we eschew. This was not the case in prior times.

But the problem is, I still have yet to be convinced that ObL would be any less strong or less interested in attacking us had we not chosen to support Afghanistan. This is a man who was extremely rich, extremely charismatic, and willing to do whatever it takes to destroy Israel and get us to pull all of our troops out of Saudi Arabia.
In fact, the idea of having human rights be the sole focus of our foreign policy brings up the question- had we abandoned Saudi Arabia (a corrupt monarchy) in the mid-80’s because of our human-rights-centric foreign policy, perhaps bin Laden- with his large funds and willingness to do anything- might have staged a coup. Would we- or anyone else- really be better off with Saudi Arabia, all of its oil fields, and the city of Mecca directly in the hands of bin Laden?

28

I don’t want human rights to be the sole focus, just the highest priority. By a big margin. Certainly there will be times when governments with nearly equivalent human rights policies will oppose each other and we’ll have to figure out where we stand. John C, I see your points and think they are good. I still hate the idea of supporting oppressive dictorships. Could we publicly say to the world, “Hey everyone, we hate both sides of this conflict. We just think that by supporting one side a bit, we’ll end up weakening both sides in the long run. Is everyone OK with that?” Would that work? Would the people we were supporting refuse our money and unite with their enemies against us? I don’t know. I just think that part of why some of our allies are hesitant to support us is that we have supported dictators in the past. So, even if our support of the dictators was strategically a good idea, it still weakened our image. Image is important here.

The problem is that in any given region of the world there sometimes is no government that supports human rights. I think that is what we were/are dealing with in Afghanistan. This whole idea become much more difficult to follow through on in that case. I see that. I’d love to go in there with giant mobile armored libraries and educate them all. Hospitals too. Give all the people as much knowledge and skills as they can absorb. Even a military enforcement of a democracy would likely be a failure in countries full of ignorant, repressed peasants. I still despise the idea of supporting a dictator.

29

What is your point then? I said the election was free and fair under the circumstances. This is not idle talk, most election monitors expressed the same view at the time. While it is regrettable that La Prensa was shut down on (only) four occassions, again * this newspaper was receiving funding from a government sponsoring armed aggression against Nicaragua*. How many other democracies would not have done the same in similar wartime circumstances?

As noted in my earlier quote, at least CIA-trained death squads didn’t assasinate the editors. To my knowledge, no writers were “dissappeared” in the night, as happened in El Salvador. And I haven’t even touched on CIA support for the “party backed by the U.S.” you refer to. The party which, IIRC, dropped out of the election under pressure from Washington because they had no hope of winning against the popular Sandinistas.

Monopoly? La Prensa is one newspaper. It was allowed to operate (most of the time) despite receiving funds from a country sponsoring attacks on Nicaragua. Besides, in a country where – at the time – almost half the population was illiterate (though making huge gains under the Sandinistas), I think you overestimate the importance of print media, except for elite opinion. From the site I quoted first: “… the Sandinistas have no monopoly on the news. The other two [of three] major newspapers and the country’s seven regional radio stations are privately owned.” (my emphasis)

Yes, the conflict between the Miskitos and Sandinistas (fanned by the CIA, see this link) was a horrible feature of that horrible period. The scale and scope, however, does not compare with the actions against native peoples by governments the U.S. supported in the region, such as Guatemala and El Salvador. And, assuming you are from the U.S., I don’t have to mention our own treatment of native peoples. Was the U.S. not a democracy in the 1800s? (I’ll add I’m skeptical of that map in the link you provided, but I’ll take it at face value for now).

You’ve mentioned one Contra leader, please tell me why a study commisioned by the U.S. Senate found that “46 of the FDN’s 48 military leaders had been members of the ‘guardia’”?

(Italics mine)
Wow, those anti-democratic thugs. How dare there be sharing of power. I’ll wager that, under the Clinton administration, there were more Republicans in the military than Democrats. Maybe there should have been a purge? Like it or not, the Sandinistas did kick out that bastard Somoza, and were considered national heros by many for that. Are they then to be completely purged from the government only 10 years later?

Yeah, feeding peasants, increasing literacy, sorely needed land reform, vastly improved access to health care – there’s a record that should be whitewashed (certainly from a Reaganite standpoint). Do you seriously want to compare their human rights record with that of other governments in the region?

30

VileOrb- Well, then, I do think we’re in general agreement as to what should be done now- I certainly believe that human rights should be a very high priority of our current foreign policy. There are, and always will be, strategic points where absolute support is more important than human rights- the Panama Canal, oil supplies in the Middle East, our trade with China. In the former case, being denied access to the Canal could cause serious problems in future engagements, and all three are things that could wreak havoc with our economy.

I agree that image is important. However, I would also point out that there’s no way to have a sterling image in world politics. Even if we denounce all dictators and throw half of our budget into feeding other countries, we will still be denounced for allowing capital punishment, or for defacto racism in the Mumia case, etc. A lot of that will simply be masked envy, and a lot of it will be self-promotion (“Here in Singapore, we don’t need rights. Everyone is happy, we’ve got a better economic growth rate than the US, and it’s so clean!” seemed to be a standard Singaporean government attitude prior to the East Asian crash).

And I certainly agree that democracy cannot survive without an educated, informed, and skilled populace; the disaster that was the end of imperialism in Africa is certainly proof of that.

31

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by John Corrado *
**

It was not until after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August, 1990 that ObL became “hostile” towards the monarchy. Prior to that event, he was considered something of a national hero for his efforts supporting the mujahedeen. He supposedly had a “prophecy” that Saddam was about to invade the Arabian Peninsula, and made that prophecy known to the King, only to have it rebuffed. When his “prophecy” was fulfilled a few months later, ObL was livid when the monarchy chose to accept the American’s offer for military assistance. He felt that the Arab mujahedeen were fully capable of defending themselves, without bringing the “infidels” onto Arab soils. He became such a threat, and garnered so much support among the Arabs, that he was placed under house arrest. The King was afraid to even tell the US about him for fear that they might withdraw their assistance if the Kingdom appeared unstable. He didn’t make it on to the American radar screen until long after he had fled Saudi Arabia.

Given that background, it is difficult to imagine the events that led to his notoriety ever taking place with the US out of the picture. Had he been allowed to organize Arab forces against Iraq, it is unlikely that he would have ever become a terrorist threat to the western world. Another option is that without US support he might have died in battle against the Soviets, along with thousands more of his jihad brethren. Is the world better off with the demise of Soviet communism and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism? It’s a tough call.

I have studied his background and profile extensively in the past three years, and nothing that I have uncovered indicates that he was ever intent on overthrowing the monarchy. His family was, and is, in the best of graces with the House of Saud. ObL is a warmonger, but it has nothing to do with a desire to rule the Kingdom. A human rights “based” initiative towards foreign policy might have led to even bigger problems than the ones we now face, but I don’t believe so. As long as the United States is reliant upon Arab oil, the policy will be to protect it at all costs, human rights be damned. The consequences of that policy are now becoming apparent to everyone.

32

Thanks John C for giving me a lot to think about.

I think that part of the reason Carter’s ideas were not implemented at the time was that it was just too difficult to do successfully. However, I think that we could have somehow communicated to the world a consistent willingness to help governments who protected the human rights of their citizens. Also, a reluctance to support oppressive governments. Even if politics was such that we couldn’t follow through on such a policy always, I think we could have exhibited our desire. And then, in our current situation, our allies might feel more confidence in our motivations. (Maybe I’m getting my verb tenses messed up here, but it’s so hard to keep them straight when you’re transitioning from ‘could have’ to ‘would have been’.)

I’ll have to think more about how to educate a populace under the control of dictator who maintains his power by keeping his people ignorant. Even a place like Cambodia, where there is some doubt as to who is actually in control, the task is daunting. I have Cambodian friends who feel they would be killed if they returned because they are educated and have spoken up about their desire to build schools to educate the populace. How can we insert these admirable people safely back into their own country? It is not an easy task. Make the country safe for tourism? No problem. Educating the people would destroy that peace.

33

Ace Face I had a complete response done, but I am going to delay posting it for a while. I have a close relative who has spent far more time in Nicaragua than I have, and I want to consult with her and get her opinion on whether I have the right side of this argument. Be back later.

34

No problem, I’m actually leaving for a weekend trip tomorrow morning, so in any case I may not be able to respond until Sunday.

35

Wow! I sure didn’t mean to say that. I believe that the terrorists’ hatred for the US has little or nothing nothing to do with any US action. I think it’s a result of their own internal situation.

First of all, the US HAS been giving large amounts of aid to Afghanistan for years. That didn’t stop the Taliban from attacking us.

Second, I don’t think that consistency is as important as VO does. It’s my impression some young people are being taught that “hypocrite” is the worst possible insult. What I was taught was that proper behavor was key, and that a partial success in that direction was far better than nothing.

I’m confused. The US gives enormous financial support to Arafat, who does not support human rights. Are you saying we should stop?

Would Vile Orb be willing to take this principle a step farther (as Bush apparently has) and declare that countries that harbor terrorists are our enemies?

36

Surprisingly, The Nation agrees with me, although this leftist rag is much closer to Guinastasia’s world view than to mine:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011008&s=hitchens

37

I am NOT saying we deserved it or this was our fault.

I am simply stating that perhaps it is a bad idea to back human rights oppressors?

38

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by december *
**

Well, first off seeing your link, before I even read the article, I thought: “Hitchens writes when drunk even more than I do, and in the international press to boot.” But then I read it, and I saw that drunk (and semi-coherent) or not, it is really saying what I did- and that you missed the point of the article, such as it was. Or at least you missed where my point and Hitchens’ coincided, which is: **Why Did We Fund Osama bin Laden??? ** We funded the people that we thought would be the strongest fighters against the Soviet Union, without a thought about their own character. This is because the sole focus of US foreign policy between the late 1940’s and the early 1990’s, with the exception of part of Jimmy Carter’s term in office, was fighting the Soviet Union. My simple point is that if we had said: if you want our help, you must try to advance human rights in the areas that you control or influence, rather than: * if you want our help, just say “Yeah, we hate the Russians”*, bin Laden, Saddam, and others would have been marginalized. Of course their hatred of the US is irrational, even psychotic. I am just trying to advocate a policy that would stop us from arming such people. JDM

39

There is this today in Slate: http://slate.msn.com/code/ThisJustIn/ThisJustIn.asp?Show=9/21/2001&idMessage=8335

40

Sorry to sidetrack back to Buck Nekked’s post, but I couldn’t let this point go unresolved.

From this site we find

The site goes on to say (italics mine)

Carter clearly supported the mujahideen overtly with humanitarian aid, as well as covertly. Reagan certainly accelerated the program, and portions of the program planned under Carter were not able to be implemented in his short year left in office, but the decision had been made and the process set in motion before Ronnie took up residence.