Message 11526362
I just posted this to JLA. It seems apropos. I was not, I say again, a Sandinista supporter. Their policies were not run by me for approval.
In his last days in office, Carter cancelled aid to Nicaragua. He was proceeding along a different line than Reagan would immediately take when he came into office.
You write, tendentiously:
<<<Of course, when the people did vote, none were more aghast than the liberals
and the media, who were wrong all along.>>>
Why don't you get it? I was happy when democratic processes removed the Sandinistas from power.
(The government that assumed power, unfortunately, had as little interest in the costs to their own people of Reagan's illegal war as you do.)
In Nicaragua the Sandinistas reacted to the new U.S. sanctions [Reagan's - E] by moving sharply left, tightening state controls, driving out private businesses, aligning themselves more closely with Cuba and the Soviet bloc, and embracing aid from radical terrorist third world regimes... the diplomatic historian Walter LaFeber aptly observed, "The Reagan administration sought to fight fire by pouring on gasoline.
[from Haynes Johnson]
BTW -- Why did you mention the Monroe Doctrine? Do you feel it has the status of Natural Law? What was your opinion of the Brezhnev Doctrine? What international body has ever recognized the Monroe Doctrine as anything other than a unilateral assertion of American primacy in countries to the south of us? |
