perfidy

Grammar Police links to exclusively leftish sites. How bad is he really? Working to crush the Sandinistas is a big plus in my book. Extinguishing a brutal communist dictatorship is a bad thing? Grammar Police evidently thinks so. And making the US ambassador responsible for the actions of the secret police of another country is rather a stretch - I mean really, he wasn't in charge, he just represented the US to the government there.

And, we all know that the Cold War was at times an ugly thing - the fight against communism often led to the support of regimes we would not have supported in other times. Kind of like now with Pakistan.

Seems a like a lot of heavy breathing. Kissinger might be a dick, and I don't agree with his foriegn policy ideas, but War Crimes? Seriously, now, that's crazy talk.

I have no clue who either Messrs. Negroponte or Police are.

That said, during the 1980s our government allied itself with some really ugly people and uglier regimes. In Latin America we reached for the bottom of the barrel and deemed the sludge we found "anti-Communist." Concurrent, heavy emigration to the US resulted as dirt poor farmers fled the armies of the numerous murderous psychopaths we directly funded. Amnesty for these illegal immigrants was largely bipartisan and driven by a sense of obligation. I'd love to say shame, but these are after all politicians.

I remember these days well. DC went rapidly from an English-speaking black/white city to one with a large Spanish-speaking population. These were not Mexicans just looking for better paid work. Many arrived leaving important things behind. Like their immediate families. The death squads were real, whether they were mowing down entire villages or individuals. And yes, there were death squads on both sides, but the government ones we funded were better armed and spectacularly bloodthirsty. I knew several of the refugees and they had terrible stories. Bad, bad shit went down.

Unfortunately, consorting with bad people rubs off. The Reagan presidency's otherwise sterling anti-communist agenda was heavily tarnished by our own indigenous lawbreaking jackboots. The FBI had to 'fess up to spying on American relief organizations. Administration officials went to jail or were given last-second presidential pardons to stay the fuck out of jail. Oliver North. I know that last wasn't a sentence, but why bother giving him any more misbegotten limelight?

The wall fell. Reagan was right. The Soviets were an Evil Empire. But not all means were justified.

FWIW, calling the Sandinistas a "brutal communist dictatorship" is a hell of a stretch. After nine years of inept blundering, they ceded power in 1990 after losing an election. Not very brutal, communist, or dictatorly of them.

GP - hm. tell that to the dead people. I'm sure your new immigrant neighbors still harbor bitter feelings to the Sandinistas.

Nope. I was being general on purpose so I didn't write a book.

Most of the immigrants fleeing Latin American death quads back in the 80s were Guatemalans and Salvadorans. According to news reports at the time, Nicaraguans were only a small percentage. My point was this: In the interest of ridding the world of godless communism we countenanced a veritable shitload of evil in own own backyard. Evil we often paid for surreptitiously or in direct violation of US law.

Danny Ortega was a dimwitted peckerwood in the Evildoing Department of Communist Dictators, Inc. The Sandistas just cannot compare to the homicidal thugs next door. I am in no way giving them a pass. The world was a very difference place before the wall fell and RealPolitik was very real. Had the Swedes miraculously been translanted to the Western Hemipshere during this actively paranoid time, we would have countenanced the offing of tens of thousands of tall blonde people, too. [sick joke] The Sandinistas never had the organization to manage anything more than Communism Light and we behaved like the Soviets had taken over Texas and were heading north.