I have sorta mixed feelings about Ray-gun.

On the good side, there is no doubt that world communism pretty much crashed and burned because of him.

On the other hand, he did some really stupid and evil stuff, like Iran-Contra. He was a Nixxon suck-ass even before he became president. In reality, I think he slept through most of his presidency. I have often wondered who was actually running the country when Reagan was president.

I believe that the most recent president who actually knew what was going-on in the lower tier policy makers (deputy assistant secretary level) was probably Jimmy Carter. He was a very hands-on, nuts and bolts administrator.

I believe Eisenhower was the first to fully implement a staff model, in which subordinate heads bring policy decisions to the president to act (or not act) on. It was undoubtedly due to his obvious mastery of that organizational structure in the American military and later, SHAEF. I'll bet Eisenhower knew the names of some of his deputy undersecretaries, but not many and he probably had no clue as to their various portfolios. I'll bet Carter knew each by name and their portfolios.

Eisenhower brought another trick with him from the Army -- his own personal files on all of his political friends and foes. He used them extensively to prep himself for meetings. Now most politicians do that and hire folks to dig deeply. It has become a tool for leverage more than just leadership.

B

The guy was totally invested in the 'communist bogeyman' theory. I'm no fan of communism but it's a response to complex factors, not just some pernicious disease. The scene in Nicaragua was abysmal, his addition to it made it worse and much of the world said as much by indicting us for war crimes there.

That's funny!

I know some Nicaraguans who are extremely grateful to outsiders who exposed the Ortega regime for what it was and helped them restore democracy to their country. Highest accolades go to Pope John Paul for publicly castigating one of the architects of the communist insurgency and consolidators of the latest version of one-party rule, one-party power. Samosista to Sandinista in one easy lesson. The guy was also a priest and so the Pope busted him for abusing his relationship with the church for political power.

Because of the people who helped the Nicaraguan people against the Sandinistas, the Nicaraguan people had free and fair elections and the Sandinistas lost power. Recently, one of the former Sandinistas was freely and fairly elected president of that country. Yes, he still hates the USA. So what? He likes the company of Chavez and Castro so why wouldn't he hate us? His hatred of all things USA is not the important lesson. Nor is his rise to power. The important thing is that he acquired power legitimately by appealing to the majority of voters on issues they cared about. Not through the barrel of a gun like he did the first time. Bottom line: Even would-be dictators can learn to be democrats.

B

Glad I could brighten your day. The contras brought about the deaths of something like 35,000 Nicaraguans, with credible testimony of widespread use of gang rape to intimidate the populace. A similar percentage of the American populace would be around 4 or 5 million. I may be off on the exact math, I don't have the time or the interest to track it down better.

The people of Nicaragua had it made abundantly clear to them that crossing the will of Uncle Sam would entail a price they simply could not endure.

There were major problems with the Sandinistas, it's true, surpassed only by the decades of brutality handed down by the Somozas. Isolating the Sandinistas and laying the blame for conditions entirely on them is inane.

Who toppled Somoza? Who propped him up all those years?

I have very mixed feelings about Reagan and his legacy. To me, he said all the right things and said them beautifully. His speeches sound beautiful in the head as well as in the ears. He was a master communicator that had a message he believed in. That was a force that his opponents consistently underestimated.

I disagree with you on part of the Iran-Contra thing: I think supporting the contras was the right thing to do and I believe history bears witness to that rightness. That is in perfect contrast to the Iran part of the equation. That was exactly the wrong way to play with Iran and we deservedly got burned for it. As I understand it, Reagan was not in the loop on that one. This is the downside of running a strict staff model of decision-making. It is easy for sneaky people to hide stuff from the boss.

To me the worst thing Reagan did was a failure to do something: To cut spending. I thoroughly and completely approve of his tax cutting. I thoroughly and completely disagree with his failure to cut spending. Part of it was due to his own party refusing to support him. The Republicans always talk about cutting government spending but never do. They are like B-girls in a cheap-ass bar:"Re-elect me and I may do these wonderful things for you" is little different from, "Buy me a drink and I mayl have sex with you." In both cases, the bar owner or lobbyist controls the shill.

B

Pt.2:

After the Sandinistas were ousted democracy was RESTORED?! Tell me about the glorious democracy under the Somoza family. How the hell else was anyone going to take power from the entrenched Somoza machine other than through the barrel of a gun?

How many millions of Iraqis would have told you, had Saddam been restored to his perch in say, '05 that they were extremely grateful that democracy under Saddam had been restored?

How many tens of thousands of American colonialists in 1780 would have told you that they were extremely grateful that the rag-tag band of malcontents under Geo. Washington had been subdued had that been the case?

We know that a large body of Cubans were not happy that Castro came to power while a large body were happy with that.

That some Nicaraguans did well under Somoza doesn't surprise me. Not sure that their missing the old status quo is an accurate critique of the Sandinistas.

Somoza could have given Saddam tips in the brutal repression category. The hatred of the US that you ascribe to Ortega may not be as irrational or trivial as you apparently suggest. Somoza used to flaunt the patronage the US freely gave him. Whenever he met with a US leader or diplomat, the image was shown copiously on state media.

We'll never know if the Sandinistas could have made a decent stab at running a govt. had they not been saddled with opposition from all sides by many forces, most notably the most powerful nation on earth.

Speaking of Reagan, that quip of his about a communist govt. being two days away from Harlingen, Texas ought to have a place in the propaganda hall of fame. The second poorest nation in the hemisphere, in the midst of turmoil, being "run" by a bunch of idealist amateurs was indeed a two day drive from Southern Texas, well maybe a bit longer since the roads betwixt were poor, and covered a mountain range and deserts.

What utter, pea-brained tripe.

Samoza was an oppressive, corrupt dictator. The Sandinistas murdered him and establsihed one-party rule by appointment and began working with Cuban and Soviet military advisers creating an offensive insurgency force that began infiltrating Honduras, Guatemala, and Costa Rica. The Contras were a mixed bag, at best (as are most insurgencies, like the Sandinistas). They included Samosistas (in the minority) along with democrats, farmers, and angry middleclass (a tiny fraction of a minute percent since Nicaragua was like most Latin American countries, heavy in peasants with a miniscule middleclass and then an oligarchy on top). They were combat ineffective and were little more than bandits when the CIA began advising them.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, the Democrat majority Congress was making sure Reagan's budget cutting initiatives got nowhere and worked closely with their lackeys in the press to portray welfare reform as a racially motivated attack on children. Along the way, Congress was still flexing it's newly discovered (under Ford) extra-constitutional diplomatic power and decided to prevent the President from exercising his constitutional diplomatic authority by passing an amendment to a bill that sought to prevent the USA from continuing assistance of the Contras by inhibiting funding, just as they were becoming organized as a credible military presence in Nicaragua. The Sandinistas were appreciative of Congressional involvement in foreign affairs and reciprocated by winking at Manuel Noriega's drug trafficking which traversed Nicaragua on it's way to the USA.

In an illegal attempt to circumvent the (stupid ******) law, Admiral Poindexter and some other Whitehouse staff ran a completely clever, extremely illegal and very stupid game off the books to basically sell arms to Iran and use the proceeds to fund the Contras. The operational details on the Contra side were handled by a marine lt. colonel with a White House office who worked under Poindexter, Oliver North.

Big explosion in Congress resulted. The democracy was at stake. Reagan had finally gone too far. Major investigation. Reagan denial. Bush I denial. Top Reagan aid who helped arrange the deal blubbered like Jimmy Swaggart in a tearful confession, raising the expectations of the coliseum crowd -- a bloodletting is at hand! Hauled before Senate committee and treated extremely harshly by interrorgators was lovely, gentle, not to bright Fawn Hall, whose trembling lips and moist eyes seduced the camera and whose late rally in support of her boss marked the point of shark-jumping by Congress. Her Boss, Ollie North, given immunity, severely abuses Congressional committee on prime time and live, transforming himself through the cleansing water of the camera lens (and despite the chastising words of the news media) from a felon circumventing the law to a man of integrity facing a bunch of Congressional jackals. Poindexter is called as the climactic star witness but after the Fawn and Ollie show, the coliseum was beginning to empty -- no blood here, folks. Poindexter says the buck stops with him, there was no presidential wink, much less knowledge or approval. Senators wring hands and cringe, knowing that Fawn Hall and Ollie had defeated them.

Oh yeah, curiously off the national radar screen, the Contras continued to gain in strength and national popularity. Many Nicaraguans say they gained popularity DESPITE CIA involvement and when the CIA pulled-out of training, the peasantry joined with teh Contras and forced the Sandinistas to reform, allowing multiple parties and elections, which the Sandinistas promptly lost by landslides and the presidency was wone by a woman whose newspaper had been closed by the Sandinistas and husband murdered by the Sandinistas. Some of the former Sandinistas renounced communism in favor of democracy very early on and became viable alternative political parties that over the subsequent decades, slowly gained trust and power. Recently capturing the presidency in a legal, free and fair election.

And that's the way it was.

Methinks your certitude is a tad misplaced. Every account I've read of Chamorro's death has him assassinated by agents of Somoza, whom Chamorro had fearlessly railed against for years.

I'll have to consult my books but here's an entry from wikipedia in the meantime:

The rebels, emboldened by the success of their actions, stepped up their assault against the government. The country tipped into full scale civil war with the 1978 murder of Pedro Chamorro, who had continued to oppose violence against the regime. 50,000 turned out for his funeral. It was assumed by many that Somoza had ordered his assassination.

And:

They say there is a first for everything, and in Nicaragua, the honor goes to Violetta Chamorro. She was born on 8 October 1929 and became the wife of a popular journalist and publisher, Joaquin Chamorro. Her husband served time in prison for his articles that spoke of corruption and exposed many unsavory aspects of the Nicaraguan government. Tragically, Joaquin Chamorro was assassinated on 10 January 1978 and thereafter Violetta Chamorro would become a publisher and literary foot soldier in the fight against political corruption and for the hope of a brighter future in Nicaragua.

from: http://www.nicaragua.com/blog/violetta-chamorro-nicaragua-s-first-woman-president

When Violetta Chamorro defeated Ortega in the election, there was a photo taken of her hugging him, trying to console him in his dejection. Think she would have done that if she thought the Sandinistas had killed her husband?

My point in this is, various US govt. and business entities propped up and made wealthy one of the most banal and evil families I've read about, the Somozas. After a ragtag group managed to oust the last of the bastids, rather than taking any responsibility for the sorry state of affairs that we had helped to foster -- perhaps trying to moderate the revolutionary spirit of the Sandinistas through diplomacy -- we hired a bunch of thugs to stir up more bloodshed. Diplomacy, are you kidding?! They were communists! Demon spawn!!

I've read of, and heard testimony from plenty of people who did not have the rosy view of them that you suggest. Perhaps some of them were not so bad. We'll likely never know for sure.

But to repeat, you're a little too certain of your version of events here, IMHO.

My certitude. My certitude?

I gave a version. There are many versions. We could get Ollie North's or Senator Inouye's and I'll bet they are as different from mine as they are from each others.

Certitude my a$$. Please, please look in a mirror.

B

PS Concerning Chomorro, various versions promote different murderers for obvious reasons; put the Samosistas for the reasons you mention; the Sandinistas, because they knew the Samosistas would be blamed and that Chomorro had already said that the Sandinistas were a cure for a disease that the country could ill-afford; the CIA killed him to maintain control of the Samoza-United Fruit Company parasitic monopoly. Etc.

Which version do you want to believe? For me, it doesn't really matter. I tend to hold them all as unproven. What some people understand as, "hypothetical."

Have you never seen a politician hug their opponent before? They did all the time in the USSR right before they put an ice-pick in the skull. We do that all the time in Louisiana (the hug, not the ice-pick). It is a cheap way to undercut the opposition's loyalty to their failed candidate and unite the electorate. It works too, if done gracefully, at least for a short time.

B

Have you seen the picture of Chamorro and Ortega? Looked pretty heart felt to me.

Of course I don't know for certain about who killed who any more than you do, but your remark about the elections of what, 1989, "restoring democracy" to Nicaragua indicates to me that you really haven't looked at the history of the Somoza'a rule much beyond the version that has commie bastards running an American ally out of power.

These three Wikipedia entries correspond well to more extensive histories I've read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasio_Somoza_Garc%C3%ADa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Somoza_Debayle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasio_Somoza_Debayle

The democracy that Nicaragua "enjoyed" under them was scarcely much more valid than that of Saddam. The elections of 1989 would surely not have taken place anywhere near as free and fairly had the Sandinistas not deposed the last of the Somoza nit-wits, and that's putting it very kindly.

The list of boneheaded, heavy handed interventions that we pursued owing to rabid fear and loathing of the dreaded commies is long:

Iran, Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, Afghanistan (an incomplete list). A communist is a human being first, responding to complex factors that he sees before him. It's a deeply flawed system to be sure but we have ignored the the contributions to the circumstances that lead people to embrace it over and over. Contributions that have American power and money written all over them.

Yes, certitude. Perhaps this will jog your memory:

And that's the way it was. - Bot

This after stating, w/o ambiguity, that the Sandinistas had closed Chamorro's newspaper and murdered him.

Chamorro was more closer allied with the Sandinistas in opposition to Somoza than vicey versa, and as for it being common to hug a political opponent, I'm not sure that would extend to an opponent you were fairly sure had murdered your husband.

The world doesn't much care for whether or not we agree on this, but I can't help but note your automatically coming down on the side of money and power in most of these disputes.

The free market sometimes has a brain but other times, its appetite is the prevailing motor. Vast portions of our natural wealth are being hauled off to be tossed on some bonfire of vanities, and the profit motive and party whores like P. Hilton sit at the controls.

It's not a deeply flawed system, it's a complete and utter cluster **** at every level.

Bull****. There was no American money and power involved in Tsarist Russia, the nucleus of the disease, or any of the African nations that voluntarily screwed themselves over with the bacillus. To the extent that being forced into anything at the barrel of a gun can be considered voluntary.

It never ceases to amaze me the way people try to justify the excesses of the largest dictatorial human rights abusing mass murdering political cult in history by claiming that it was just in answer to bad conditions that preceded it. Crap. So were the Nazi's. The No2 on that list.

Every country in the world at one time or another has the ability to choose capitalism with it's promise of struggle towards eventual success and non capitalism with it's promise of a struggle towards catastrophy.

- Peter.

No American money in Tsaurist Russia but plenty of corrupt oligarchs. I'm not agitating for communism or apologizing for it, just saying our response to it has been ineffective at best and criminally brutal at worst.

Communism wouldn't have looked so good to the Vietnamese if not for the heavy handed plundering by the French, whom we took the baton from.

American firms were making good money when the threat of having some of that profit stay closer to home in communist hands in Guatemala, Chile, and Nicaragua (for starters) reared its ugly head.

And as Bot noted above, the Sandinista leader that was supposedly overwhelmingly thrown out of office back in '89 has now been elected. Perhaps the opposition to him was not so overwhelming after all. The guy has reformed himself quite a bit from what I can gather.

But I maintain that the vast, vast majority of Americans don't begin to have a clue about the roots of what went down in Nicaragua.

Therewith I agree. As a foreigner it's my opinion that the vast majority of American's don't begin to have a clue about the roots of what goes down anywhere.

- Peter.