Weinberger dead

The Wege says "Rot in hell you lying motherfucker." You can't say that yourself? Or are you linking to it so you can have it both ways, and get to call a dead man a lying motherfucker while at the same time you can pretend to be above such behaviour?

I don't believe in a hell but I echo the sentiment (isn't that what counts?). By the way, Ulik, how is it bad to call a dead man a lying motherfucker? Would it be more polite if he were alive?

Well, maybe. But at least in Wiene's day, the wars had some rationale -- the link between Sandinistas and the Soviets was a real thing, as opposed to the link between Saddam and Bin Laden.

I thought my comment was plain: I endorse the Wege's statement. Weinberger was another poisonous little creature from the Reagan years.

yeah, those dictatorship-fighting sandanistas, who instituted nicaragua's first social and economic liberalization, civil rights, education campaign, and environmental policy, and peacefully left power when they lost an election. that's the kind of scum the US should be going after.

now...the contras, not as classy as the robber baron somozas, but still our kinda guys. got phrases like "increase the voltage on his testicle cuff" into the CIA spanish phrase book. probably helped develop some techniques that have been put to good use recently.

don't take this as a defense of the sandanistas and everything they ever did...just an observation on the inanity of cold war horse-backing, and a perfect example of how the US has always preferred obeisance over democracy.

there will never be an excuse for US conduct in central america (and i'm including democrats). weinberger was an evil bastard whose geopolitics cost countless poor people their lives and stripped nations of their economic and political dignity, for no purpose higher than red-baiting demagoguery in support of wildly incompetent deficit spending on defense.

Actually, Weinberger is not a lying motherfucker.

Anymore.

However, even as a corpse he can be a suppurating canker on the buttocks of the universe.

yeah, those dictatorship-fighting sandanistas, who instituted nicaragua's first social and economic liberalization, civil rights, education campaign, and environmental policy, and peacefully left power when they lost an election. that's the kind of scum the US should be going after.

Hey, I was a undergrad in the late 1980s too, and heard all sorts of excuses for the Sandinistas -- such as they really weren't Marxists, had no link to the USSR. etc. The problem is that since the cold war ended things have become public knowledge. Like the entire *existence* of the Sandinistas was a KGB plot. The founder of the party, Carlos Amador, was a KGB agent, for crying out loud (read the former KGB officer Vasili Mitrokhin's "The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World"). The Sandinistas left power because they could see that the USSR was on its last legs and couldn't support them, not for any love of democracy.

Ask the Miskitos how wonderful the Sandanistas were.

What is wrong with being Marxist? Or getting money from the USSR? They were and did, obviously. When your kleptocrat dictator is getting loads of cash from the US, taking money from the Soviets is a pretty sound strategy.

Being Marxist and getting money from the USSR doesn't mean they weren't popularly and democratically supported, did not enact some good policies, and doesn't justify removing them from power by rigging elections and supporting repellent thugs like the somozas or the contras.

Both the USSR/KGB and USA/CIA had vastly conflated, megalomaniacal notions that their ideological battle was important in the local struggles they supported. They were both milked for weapons, cash, and expertise. Some members of the Sandinistas were also members of the KGB...they had plenty of reasons to hate the US, wanted to overthrow a horrible US-backed dictator, and the KGB was offering to help. Cold war allegiances are very misleading...all these people had very local goals and were looking for support. Just ask CIA recruit Osama Bin Laden.

The Sandanistas left power because they lost an election.

Ask the Miskitos how wonderful the Sandanistas were

As I said, I would not and am not trying to offer a blanket defense of the Sandinistas. Just that they were more ideologically democratic and progressive than any of the people we were backing.

But, please, go ahead and compare routine US massacres throughout the decades to the worst the Sandinistas ever did.

The Sandanistas were forced to allow elections because the US backed the Contras. Then when the Nicaraguans were finally allowed to vote no one voted for the pedophile Ortega and his Sandanista party.

wow! the nicaraguans must be as eternally grateful as the iraqis!

The Sandanistas were forced to allow elections because the US backed the Contras.

Hahahahahahaha

If anything, the Contras provided a great excuse *not* to hold elections, and did make sure that right wing parties were excluded from the elections.

Hey, there's no KGB any more.

How come the US is waging chemical and boiological warfare in South and Central America right now? What the *new* excuse?

So can we have Rumsfeld keel over next, please?

The Nicaraguans are grateful, if you had ever been there you would know that.

"How come the US is waging chemical and boiological warfare in South and Central America right now?"

How come the only person who thinks this is you?

Hector,

Your reasoning astounds me. The Sandistas lost the election because they were unable to defeat the US-backed Contras, and the social cost of the guerilla war was enormous. I guess in that sense the CIA/Contras "forced an election." What if the Sandinistas had won? Do you think the US would have bowed to the principle of democracy and stopped intervening? Would the Contra's atrocities have stopped?

This is after the Sandinistas ousted a dictatorship, wrote a democratic constitution, and founded the first democratic institutions in the country. Somehow the fact that the Sandinistas still enjoy a lot of political support and high levels of representation in government makes me hesitant to take your word for it that Nicaraguans are, in general, thankful for the US-backed military operations that led to their downfall and 10s of thousands of civilian deaths. Nor are they thankful, by my best guess, for the US's petty refusal to send aid, especially after the big hurricane, because the Sandinistas were in power. I wonder who you think you're speaking for.

Nothing like coming home drunk from Drinking Liberally and finding my traffic tripled by a wayward link accompanied by multiple misspellings of Sandinista.

Reagan's people fucked up everything between Mexico and South America just because they could. And then we used the same torture techniques taught at the School of Americas to become war criminals in Afghanistan and Iraq and whatever the fuck you call Gitmo.

The number one blogger in the world is an El Salvadoran kid who lived through a Reagan-fed civil war. Guatemala, even Costa Rica, were ripped apart by our aid and pandering to the remnants of colonial barbarism. There's no reason to miss Cappy or Lyn Nofziger. Just because they look like naifs next to the world class bunglers who replaced them is no reason to think they were OK.

I just can't figure out why it was so goddamned important for the USA to take up the slack when the USSR stopped screwing up the world. But thanks to Reagan's crew, we certainly took a stab at it.

The people of Central America are eternally grateful to the United States for our beneficent influence and have been since at least 1856 when we graciously lent Nicaragua a president.

Ah, the wonderful Contras, suppurated (or do I mean supported) by Guns and money via the dearly beloved Oliver North .......

Of course, ther KGB were evil - probably considerably worse than the CIA - but then it WAS a religious war, after all - communism being a classic religion.

"Somehow the fact that the Sandinistas still enjoy a lot of political support"

They enjoy a minority support, just like when they were in power. Once democracy was allowed the people rejected the Sandinistas.

"Nor are they thankful, by my best guess"

You guess because you've never been there.

Once democracy was allowed the people rejected the Sandinistas.

A classic example of right wing "honesty".

The Sandinistas won the 1984 elections with 63% of the vote. 43% in the 1996 elections. They currently hold 43 of the Nicaraguan parliment's 90 seats.

Hardly "rejection".

How come the only person who thinks this is you?

I guess it wasn't on Faux News.

What is wrong with being Marxist? Or getting money from the USSR? They were and did, obviously. When your kleptocrat dictator is getting loads of cash from the US, taking money from the Soviets is a pretty sound strategy.

Well, at the time the Soviets were actually trying to take over the world. Whether this would have been a good thing or not is a matter of personal opinion, but it could well be seen as a betrayal of your country's sovereignty to support them.

In South America the biggest threath to freedom was the UD back then, so while your point is valid on a global scale (say in Europe or Asia), it was certainly not true in this case.

UD should be US

Thanks for clearing that up. I was racking my brains trying to remember who "UD" was.

I salute Weinberger. He was one of those who made Cold War crush the USSR and helped bring freedom to the Soviet block.

Well, at the time the Soviets were actually trying to take over the world.

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

I don't know, Brain, how many pickles could I fit up my nose at one time?

Wow. I haven't thought about ol' Cap in at least 10 years or more. I'm actually a little saddened by the news, believe it or not. I mean, I wasn't exactly a fan of these people; I spent the better part of the '80s convinced that I was going to be drafted to fight a very nasty, ugly little war in Central America (raging paranoia was popular back then, too). But Cap never inspired the level of revulsion in me that, say, James Watt or Ed Meese did.

I dunno. Maybe it's just a sense of history flowing past.

The Wege says "Rot in hell you lying motherfucker." You can't say that yourself? Or are you linking to it so you can have it both ways, and get to call a dead man a lying motherfucker while at the same time you can pretend to be above such behaviour?

Public spitting on corpses: the revenge small people take. PZ, grow up.

McFarlane, Meese, and Watt were Reaganites that I found much more distasteful. I found more plusses for Weinberger than negatives.

Weinberger consistently supported an all volunteer military force and was an ardent friend of the people in uniform. He put high values on crew survivability in weapon systems and pushed hard for raises for servicemen in the early eighties.

Also memorable was a mid-eighties speech that clearly laid out specific criteria that should be met in American military actions: clear and imminent threat to national interests, overwhelming forces if deployment is called for, let the military run the show without political quarterbacking, the necessity of having Congressional and public support for the deployement, and having clear objectives and exit strategies.

As an Air Force brat at the time, that kinda left a favorable impression on me. More pay for my dad and a feeling that there was not going to be a Vietnam era 'bomb this target today but give those SAM sites a skip, we might unduly antagonize the enemy if we do that'.

Also memorable was a mid-eighties speech that clearly laid out specific criteria that should be met in American military actions: clear and imminent threat to national interests, overwhelming forces if deployment is called for, let the military run the show without political quarterbacking, the necessity of having Congressional and public support for the deployement, and having clear objectives and exit strategies.

Yeah. They don't make them Defence Secretaries like they used to.

Ah, yes, the Contras.

Because, raping, torturing and killing nuns in front of children is such a GOOD thing.