Iran-Contra, and the whole plot to overthrow the Sandinistas.
We supplied one side in a civil war.
How is intervening in a civil war “terrorism”? Did we train the Contras to blow up Cuban hotels to keep the Cubans from funding the Sandanistas? Did we help support the suicide bombers who killed thousands of Muscovites as retaliation for Soviet support for the Sandanistas? Did any of those things ever happen?
The United States has sent arms and support to groups attempting to take control of a country through civil war. That was completely different from terrorism.
Let me get this straight-
We were aiding a group who repeatedly went out into rural areas, assassinated innocents, trying to strike FEAR into the heart of the people, people connected with the assassinations of several church workers, including Archbishop Oscar Romero, people who were condemned by Amnesty International, to try and overthrow a DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED government.
Their goals were different-their methods may not have been so grandiose. But I would say that going out into fields and murdering innocent peasants and trying to BLAME it on the government is terrorism, pure and simple.
http://www.webcom.com/pinknoiz/covert/irancontra.html
From one of our training manuels:
From Shutdown the School of the Americas:
http://www.patweb.com/soa/research.cfm
http://www.webcom.com/peaceact/soafs.html
To me, this equals terrorism. It isn’t always some grand flashy project. Using TERROR as a weapon makes one a terrorist, to my mind.
http://168.143.151.139/soam.html
They even publish a MANUAL on terrorism.
To make war against the people of Nicaragua, simply because we didn’t like who they voted for was wrong, and was terrorism in my mind.
But what do I know? I’m just an idealistic college student liberal.
:rolleyes:
Democratically elected five years after they first took power. The Sandinistas took control of the government in 1979, and ran as a five-person junta until it held elections in 1984- years after the United States first began supporting the Contras.
Along the lines of the rest- when the United States went into revolution against the British government, citizens who publicly supported the British were tarred, feathered, and murdered. Prior to and during the Civil War, the states of Kansas and Missouri were deluged with militants from both sides committing massacres in an attempt to drive off their opponents.
If you consider what the Contras did to be terrorism, then fine. This country was then also founded by terrorists and most of our early leaders were terrorists, then. And obviously there is little we should do about bin Laden; in the end, we’re no better than he.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but the writer is saying that although fear is to be expected from the general population, cooperation may still be achieved so long as terror is not directed at them.
Once again, this seems to be a warning not to engage in terroristm.
I’ve agreed with everything you’ve said in this thread, John, but this caught my eye for one reason and one reason only.
There was a Bloom County strip sometime circa 1984. Opus, I believe, was reading a newspaper and choking. Milo gave Opus the Heimlich maneuver, and Opus spits out, “‘Star Wars’ WILL work! The Nicarauguan Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers! The President doesn’t use Grecian Formula!” and then catches his breath. “Thanks … I just couldn’t swallow it all.”
lno- Actually, the image in the back of my mind was an old Herblock cartoon, which showed this scruffy, five o’clock shadowed goon in a frock coat, powdered wig, and carrying an M-16 standing in front of a TV camera. Behind the camera, someone was whispering to Ronald Reagan, “I don’t think this is working, sir.” But the Bloom County reference is probably better. Or, at least, more amusing.
And thanks for the support!
Well, the manual linked to on the site (Terrorism and the Urban Guerilla) seems to be more of the “Terrorism: What it is and how do you fight it” variety. The link does include Carlos Marighella’s “Mini-Manual for the Urban Guerilla”. Marighella was a Brazilian Communist who formed a guerilla group to overthrow the government. If the “mini-manual” is included in the classes, it’s not to show “This is how you should act”, but more, “This is what you’re up against.”, because being educated on how guerillas work gives you some idea of how to defeat them. While it’s true that, with that knowledge, you can become a guerilla yourself, that wasn’t necessarily the end.
I guess I just feel that we need to stop supporting people who have no regard for human rights.
If that’s naive, then I guess I’m naive.
december on the Cold War:“Fortunately an evil form of totalitarian government has been mostly replaced with democracy, and nuclear war has been averted.”
So let me get this straight… Soviet-bloc totalitarianism was superseded and nuclear war has been averted because the CIA funded 30,000 bin Ladenite fundamentalists on their anti-Soviet jihad?
Hmmm… Last time I checked, I thought that trade union solidarity in Poland, Gorbachev’s reforms in Russia, and German reunification were the main reasons for the end of the cold war. Or did these depend on the CIA as well?
It’s simply amazing how some people will refuse to recognize a mistake under any circumstances! No, the CIA isn’t logically or morally responsible for this atrocity. But it certainly contributed to a web of enabling conditions. Given the CIA’s manifest inability to protect us from terrorist attack wouldn’t this be a good time to acknoweldge errors and learn from our mistakes.
I also want to point out that we mustn’t congratulate ourselves for averting nuclear war just yet. On the contrary, this is exactly the time to be cautious rather than smug. Pakistan is also a nuclear power. Pakistan is under a military dictatorship. Pakistan’s willingness to collaborate with the US–coerced by the Bush administration, and denounced by the Taliban–is causing anti-US and pro-fundamentalist tensions to flare up. India (which has its own problems with Pakistani-based terrorism) is less than thrilled to see the US cozying up to Pakistan’s military dictatorship, while others fear that Pakistan will become the next fundamentalist state.
I don’t suggest that the US shouldn’t collaborate in some fashion with Pakistan. But I do suggest that we learn from the many mistakes cited in this thread. If we are going to allow our government to act unilaterally as the world’s puppetmaster and policeman, we are going to worsen the threat of terrorism.
Don’t get me wrong: maybe the Bush administration won’t go that way. We don’t know exactly how events will unfold. We don’t know how NATO allies, the UN, and other international institutions might influence US policy. But, as a public, we can certainly take advtange of “hindsight” and shape it into a little foresight instead of sticking our heads in the sand about our own past history.
Guinastasia, I don’t think you’re naive. I’d like anyone to come up with good result from the CIA’s support of bin Laden.
Who did they overthrow, though? Wasn’t it a US-backed dictator? Somoza, wasn’t it?
I agree. Back to bin Laden and al Qaeda, in what way was the US supposed to know that he was an immoral animal back when he was trained to fight against a communist invasion? How did we condone terrorism in this case?
It’s not naive.
It’s damned foolish.
Look, we supported a lot of nasty regimes during the Cold War. You’re right- many of the revolutions we supported and the leaders we backed were nasty brutish thugs.
But we were fighting against the Soviet Union. And had we backed away and said, “Well, we can’t support them, they’re too nasty”, the Soviets would have been more than happy to join in and support them in our stead. End result- equivalent nasty thugs in power, with us having absolutely no say in their actions. At least with the ones we supported, we could say, “stop doing X, or we’ll start cutting funding.”
Since the end of the Cold War, we’ve dropped a bunch of that because there’s no longer someone willing to act in our stead. Generally, now, it’s overwhelming American funding or a small trickle from assorted others. Our post-1990 record is much cleaner.
Yes, we still do support governments that have abyssmal human rights records. But there’s more to existance that civil rights. Let me ask you- would you be willing to lose your job and be unemployed for the next five years if it means a move to democracy in China? Because for us to cut economic ties with them, remove MFN status- that would put a nasty hurt on our economy. Hate the fact that we support corrupt monarchies in the Middle East? Then be willing to cut half your salary, because should we back out, our oil supplies may be controlled by hostile interests (like Iraq). And maybe you don’t drive a car, but every good you purchase was driven or flown somewhere, and the jump in gas prices will hit you directly.
So. Yes, we should fight harder for human rights. But there are basics we need to keep up. We need to keep the Panama Canal open to us for military and shipping purposes, and if that means supporting another Noreiga down there, that’s what we have to do. We need oil supplies, and therefore need to keep Saudi Arabia and Kuwait close to us even if it means swallowing the fact that they treat their women like shit. We need markets for our goods and suppliers for us, and that means sucking it up when China plays dirty.
Absolutely.
However, my point was that Guin can’t fault the Contras for fighting a ‘democratically elected’ government when the Sandinista junta didn’t even try to hold elections.
What’s your point?
I see. I don’t think you’re saying this exactly, but to me that comes awfully close to-these people have to suffer, so WE can prosper.
Hmmmm…in other words, it’s okay to trample on the rights of a few, so the rest of the world can be okay.
I ask you again.
Are you willing to be unemployed for the next five years- and no welfare checks, no state assistance, no handouts from the 'rents, maybe the occasional minimum-wage job that lasts two weeks- if it means possibily bringing democracy to China?
Are you willing to lose half of your take-home pay for the rest of your life in order to possibly bring democracy to the Middle East?
And finally, are you willing to vote for any political candidate who states that we much make such terrible sacrifices because it might bring human rights to the rest of the world, or might well open up massive crackdowns and lowered rights (which almost happened in Indonesia) or even the rise of worse leaders (like in Afghanistan, where our non-intervention allowed the Taliban to take control)?
Think about this. Because we supported bin Laden and the other Islamic fighters against the Communists, don’t we now have an even greater responsibility to crush and destroy him?
And Guin, the point is that it doesn’t matter what the US does. If we put a 100 foot concrete fence around our country and never came out again, do you think the world would be worse or better?
We cannot support freedom elsewhere in the world unless we exist as a country. The Soviets wanted to destroy us and our allies. We had to fight back, but we couldn’t fight directly or we would have nuclear war. The Cold War was fought by proxy for that reason. There was no other way to fight it, and if we had lost we would either be Soviet slaves or radioactive dust.
We had to fight to Cold War, and we had to win it, or else freedom for everyone everywhere would have been crushed forever. I know that the Central American peasant deciding whether to join the pro-Soviet guerillas or the pro-Western guerillas didn’t understand the global issues behind it. But if he joined the Soviet side then he was an enemy of freedom and had to be fought.
Let me ask you-does it have to be the either or argument?
Do you truly believe that life is so black and white?
I’m sorry-I can’t abandon my moral sense of what is right and what is wrong. Because I truly feel that when one starts down that path, it will, as Yoda said, forever dominate one’s destiny.
If this was meant for me, I have no idea what you mean.
Look. If we wish to try and bring human rights to China, this means punishing them for their human rights abuses and rewarding them for any moves towards democracy.
We can only punish them through military means or economic means. Military means is obviously against everything you hold dear; economic means therefore are the only way we have to inflict punishment upon them.
Okay, in theory, we could shout a lot and be nasty towards them until they shaped up. To quote Rocky, “That trick never works.”
Therefore- in order for us to promote human rights in China, we must place economic constraints upon them. We must institute tariffs, maybe even cut off trade. We must prohibit American companies from doing business with them. By doing so, we create the incentive for them to change- once they start changing, they can have access to our markets and our businesses access to theirs.
But to place such economic constraints upon them means hurting our own economy, as there are plenty of corporations out there profiting from trade with China. Which means that the GNP will go down, companies go out of business, and people get laid off until such time as China moves towards human rights… assuming they care enough about our markets to do so. They may not. They may use the loss of American business as an opportunity to forge closer business ties with Japan or the EU.
Or they may start moving towards democracy, and like so many other countries, not move fast enough for the reformists while moving too fast for the reactionaries, and end up in a civil war. Or a military coup which decides to massacre the reformists.
Sorry that this is all so many shades of gray, kid, but that is the world, and pretending that it’s black and white and absolute right versus absolute wrong doesn’t make it so.