Thread: US imperialism in Nicaragua

It is instructive to look at another international terrorist campaign to overcome "successful defiance": The US terrorist war against Nicaragua. The CIA-contra war in Nicaragua was one of the highest priorites of the Reagan administration. Nicaragua was dangerous agent of the plague becouse it was so close to home: "a cancer here right in our land mass," Secretary of State George Shultz warned.


President Reagan meets with Contra leaders in the Oval Office. Oliver North is at far right. When this photo was officially released North's image was cut out.

The Iran-Contra Affair 20 Years On

Shultz Denounces Nicaragua And Says It Endangers U.S. - New York Times

The threat was successful independant development that might "infect" others, renewing the threat of Guatemala's crushed experiment with democracy, and Cuba's "successful defiance". Shultz warned of the threat of the Nicaraguan cancer and announced that we must "cut it out". And not by legal means: "Negotiations are euphemesim for captulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table", Shultz stated, railing against those who advocate "utopian, legalistic means like outside mediation, the United Nations, and the World Court, while ignoring the power element of the equation." The US blocked efforts of Central American presidents to bring negotiated peace to the region in the early 1980's. The proceeded to "cut the cancer out" by terror and economic strangulation.

Amazon.com: Nicaragua: The threat of a good example?: Books: Dianna Melrose

George Schultz Quotes

'Contra' Terrorism Is, Unfortunately, True - New York Times

The leading specialist on Central America, Thomas Walker, points out that after a few years, the US terrorist war had reversed significant economic growth and social progress that followed the overthrow of the US backed Somoza dictatorship, driving the vulnerable economy to disaster so that the country achieved "the unenviable status of being the poorest country in the western hemisphere". One component of the triumph, Walker continues, was a death toll that would be comparable to 2.2 million dead in the US, in per capita terms. Reagan State Department official and historian Thomas Carothers observes, "... The most important effect of the Reagan policy was the tremendous destruction it wreaked on Nicaragua ... Approximately 30,000 Nicaraguans were killed and tens of thousands others were wounded, a death total higher in per capita terms than that suffered by the United States in the Civil War, World War One, World War Two, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined. A generation of young Nicaraguans was devastated.

And just as importantly, diverted the energies of tens of thousands of young Nicaraguans away from productive economic activity. The war also wreaked havoc on the country's agricultural system, disrupting the production and distribution of food in many areas of the country. By the end of the 1980s Nicaragua was an economic disaster area and had sunk to being the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere except for Haiti."

Democracy by Force excerpted from the book In the Name of Democracy U.S. Policy Toward Latin America in the Reagan Years

Thomas Carothers - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Cease-Fire Begins in Nicaragua As the Contras Agree to Disarm - New York Times

The United States has long dominated the Western Hemisphere by two major methods: violence and economic strangulation. Quite generally, international affairs have more than a slight resemblance to the Mafia. The Godfather does not take it lightly when he is crossed, even by a small storekeeper.

Previous attempts at independence have been crushed, partly because of a lack of regional cooperation. Without it, threats can be handled one by one. (Central America, unfortunately, has yet to shake the fear and destruction left over from decades of U.S.-backed terror, especially during the 1980s.)

To the United States, the real enemy has always been independent nationalism, particularly when it threatens to become a "contagious example," to borrow Henry Kissinger's characterization of democracy in Chile.

One of the clearest and most lucid accounts of the planning behind this was by George Kennan. Kennan was the head of the State Department policy planning staff in the late 1940s. In the following document, PPS23, February 1948, he outlined the basic thinking:

"We have about 50 percent of the world's wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population.... In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity.... We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.... We should cease to talk about vague and..., unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."

http://www.archives.gov/research/ww2...film/m1171.pdf

http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdm-nixon/nsdm-23.pdf

The idealistic slogans are, of course, to be constantly trumpeted by scholarship, the schools, the media, and the rest of the doctrinal system in order to pacify the domestic population.

This Top Secret document referred to the Far East, but Kennan applied the same ideas to Latin America in a briefing for Latin American ambassadors in which he explained that one of the main concerns of U.S. policy is the "protection of our raw materials." Who must we protect our raw materials from? Well, primarily, the domestic populations, the indigenous population, which may have ideas of their own about raising the living standards, democratization, and human rights. And that's inconsistent with maintaining the disparity. How will we protect our raw materials from the indigenous population? Well, the answer is the following:

"The final answer might be an unpleasant one, but... we should not hesitate before police repression by the local government. This is not shameful, since the Communists are essentially traitors.... It is better to have a strong regime in power than a liberal government if it is indulgent and relaxed and penetrated by Communists."

The Truman Doctrine and NSC 68

Well, who are the Communists? "Communists" is a term regularly used in American political theology to refer to people who are committed to the belief that "the government has direct responsibility for the welfare of the people." In the words of a 1949 State Department intelligence report which warned about the spread of this evil doctrine, which does, of course, threaten "our raw materials" if we can't abort it somehow.

A National Security Council report titled, U.S. Policy Toward Latin America: National Security Study (NSC 5432) states that, "There is no part of the world where business relationships play a greater role in our foreign policy problems than in Latin America."

"The major threat to US interests is the trend in Latin America toward nationalistic regimes that respond to an increasing popular demand for immediate improvement in the low living standards of the masses and for production geared to domestic needs.

The US is committed to encouraging a climate conducive to private investment, and must encourage the Latin American countries to base their economies on a system of private enterprise, and, as essential thereto, to create a political and economic climate conducive to private investment of both domestic and foreign capital, including guarantees for the opportunity to earn and in the case of foreign capital to repatriate a reasonable return."

http://www.foia.cia.gov/browse_docs_full.asp

Destruction of Nicaragua was an important task. The country's progress during the early 80's was praised by the World Bank and other international agencies as "remarkable" and as "laying a solid foundation for socio-economic development" (Inter American Develpment Bank). In the health sector, the country enjoyed "one of the most dramatic improvments in child survival in the developing world" (UNICEF 1986). The real cancer feared by Reaganites was this: Nicaragua's "remarkable" transformation could have become a "revolution without boarders." Therefore, It was only logical, from the US point of view, to destroy the "virus."

Robert Pastor, President Carter's national security adviser for Latin America writes,"The United States did not want to control Nicaragua or the other nations of the region, but it also did not want to allow developments to get out of control. It wanted Nicaraguans to act independently, except when doing so would affect US interests adversely."

Not Condemned to Repetition: The ... - Google Book Search

Thomas Carothers writes from the perspective of an insider as well as a scholar, having served in Reagan's State Department during the 'democracy enhancement' programmes in Central America.

Carothers writes, "Where Washington's influence was least, in South America, there was real progress towards democracy, which the Reagan administration generally opposed, later taking credit for it when the process proved irresistible. Where Washington's influence was greatest, progress was least, and where it occurred, the U.S. role was marginal or negative.

The underlying U.S. goal is maintaining the basic societal orders of particular Latin American countries approximately as they are-ensuring that the economics are not drastically rearranged and that the power relations of the various social sectors are not turned upside down.

Thus, there is a built-in tension or even contradiction in the recurrent impulse to promote democracy. The impulse is to promote democratic change but the underlying objective is to maintain the basic order of what, historically at least, are quite undemocratic societies.

The United States mitigates this tension by promoting very limited, controlled forms of democratic change. The deep fear in the United States government of populist-based change in Latin America-with all its implications for upsetting established economic and political orders and heading off in a leftist direction- leads to an emphasis on incremental change from the top down Democratic development is interpreted as the strengthening or modification of existing governmental institutions.

The US inevitably sought only limited, top-down forms of democratic change that did not risk upsetting the traditional structures of power with which the United States has long been allied."

Conclusions excerpted from the book In the Name of Democracy U.S. Policy Toward Latin America in the Reagan Years

Nicaragua did not respond to the terrorist attacks with bombings in the US. Rather, it went to the World Court for relief. In 1986, the court ruled in Nicaragua's favor, dismissing US claims and condemning Washington for "unlawful use of force" -international terrorism, in lay terms. The decision had little effect. The World Court was condemned as a "hostile forum" by the editors of the New York Times, and therefore, irrelevant, like the U.N. US aid to the contras was described as "humanitarian" in violation of the court ruling. Congress immediatly approved an additional 100 million to escalate what the court had condemned as the "unlawful use of force." The US continued to undermine "utopian, legalistic means" untill it acheived it's goal by terror.

The World Court ordered the US to pay reperations and the calls were dismissed as ridiculous by the Reagan administration and their allies in the agenda setting "liberal media". Following the US rejection of World Court orders Nicaragua took its case to the Securirty Council, which endorsed the court's judgement and called on all states to observe international law. The US vetoed the resolution. Then Nicaragua took it to the general assembly, which passed a similar resolution with only the US, Israel and El Salvador opposed. None of this was ever reported so it has disapeared from history.

International Court of Justice

US dismisses World Court ruling on contras | World news | The Guardian

Washington's reaction to the orders of the World Court was to escalate the terrorist war, while also ordering its forces to go "after soft targets" - undefended civilian targets - and to avoid the Nicaraguan army.

Testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Western Hemisphere subcommittee, General John Galvin, leader of the US southern command said, "The contras have a fighting chance if we sustain them" with continued military aid. "It's getting better. In the past few months, I'm more hopeful than I was before." The contras followed Washington's instructions to attack "soft targets" such as farm cooperatives and health clinics instead of "trying to duke it out with the Sandinistas directly," "attack a lot of schools, health centers, and those sort of things" so that "the Nicaraguan government cannot provide social services for the peasants, cannot develop it's project," Galvin explained.

When asked by the subcommitee to define US policy in Nicaragua, former CIA Director Stansfield Turner responded “state-sponsored terrorism.”

US GENERAL SAYS CONTRA CHANCES IMPROVING | Article from The Boston Globe | HighBeam Research

State Department spokesman Charles Redman justified the more extreme terrorist programs, issuing a statement that "would do credit to George Orwell's ministry of truth", Americas Watch responded, adding that Redman's conception of "legitimate target" would justify targets on Israeli collectives or on US civillian targets.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1986/jun/28/usa.marktran

A human rights organization issued a report today citing systematic killings by the Nicaraguan rebels. The 170-page report was issued by Americas Watch, a group based in New York.

''The conduct of the military conflict, particularly by the insurgent forces, continued to have a severe impact on rural civilians,'' the report said. ''Violations of the laws of armed conflict by the contras cause great suffering to the Nicaraguan people.''

At a news conference, the vice chairman of Americas Watch, Aryeh Neier, said the organization was unable to detect any improvement in the behavior of the contras last year.

''They still engage in selective but systematic killing of persons they perceive as representing the Government, in indiscriminate attacks against civilians or in disregard for their safety, and in outrages against the personal dignity of prisoners,'' the report said. ''The contras also engage in widespread kidnapping of civilians, apparently for purposes of recruitment as well as intimidation.''

''The escalating brutality of contra practices,'' the report said, ''leads Americas Watch to conclude that disregard for the rights of civilians has become a de facto policy of the contra forces.''


Americas Watch, charged that ''the contras systematically engage in violent abuses.'' It also concludes that rebel violations of the laws of war are ''so prevalent that these may be said to be their principal means of waging war.'' It accused the Contras of:

• targeting health care clinics and health care workers for assassination.
• kidnapping civilians.
• torturing civilians.
• executing civilians, including children, who were captured in combat.
• raping women.
• indiscriminately attacking civilians and civilian houses.
• seizing civilian property.
• burning civilian houses in captured towns.

A surviver of a raid in Jinotega province interviewed by The Guardian stated that Contra rebels committed these atrocities against Sandinista prisoners after a battle at a Sandinista rural outpost:

"Rosa had her breasts cut off. Then they cut into her chest and took out her heart. The men had their arms broken, their testicles cut off. They were killed by slitting their throats and pulling the tongue out through the slit."

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

U.S. GROUP FINDS NO IMPROVEMENT IN CONTRAS' HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD - New York Times

Human Rights Watch reports, the"contras were major and systematic violators of the most basic standards of the laws of armed conflict, including by launching indiscriminate attacks on civilians, selectively murdering non-combatants, and mistreating prisoners."

"The Bush administration is responsible for these abuses, not only because the contras are, for all practical purposes, a U.S. force, but also because the Bush administration has continued to minimize and deny these violations, and has refused to investigate them seriously."

NICARAGUA



New Republic editor Micahael Kinsley critisized human rights organizations for becoming too emotional about State Department justifications for terrorist attacks on "soft targets". We should instead adopt a "sensible policy that meets the test of cost benefit analysis," he advised, an analysis of "the amount of blood and misery that will be poored in, and the likelihood that democracy will emerge at the other end" - "democracy" as US elites understand the term, an interpretation demonstrated clearly in the region. Its taken for granted that they have the right to conduct the analysis and pursue the project if it passes their tests.

And it did pass their tests. In 1990. Thomas Walker writes, "the voters chose a candidate of Washington's choice with a gun held to their heads, as was clear to many impartial observers."

Nicaragua: Living in the Shadow of ... - Google Book Search

US elites celebrated the victory, entranced by the new "romantic age." Commentators accross the spectrum praised the success of the methods adopted to "wreck the economy and prosecute a long and deadly proxy war untill the exausted natives overthrew the unwanted government themselves," with a cost to us that is "minimal", leaving the victims with "wrecked bridges, sabotaged power stations, and ruined farms," and thus providing the US candidate with a "winning issue": "ending the impoverishment of the people in Nicaragua" (TIME). We are "United In Joy" at this outcome, "proud of this victory for US fair play" (New York Times).

But Will It Work? - TIME

The official policy of attacking soft targets relied on US control of the skies over Nicaragua and communications equipment provided to the death squads attacking from US bases in Honduras. The Reagan administration tried the strategy that was praised by CIA director Allen Dulles in Guatemala and recommended for Cuba: pressuring allies to refuse request for military aid, so that Nicaragua would be forced to turn to the Russians for help and could then be portrayed as a tentacle of the Kremlin sponsored conspiracy poised to destroy us. Nicaragua didnt take the bait however. Reagan propaganda therefore fabricated tales about Soviet MiGs threatening the US from Nicaraguan bases.

With Washingon-style democracy and economic programs restored, the country sank more deeply into poverty. A decade after the US regained control, half the economically active population left the country, "often the boldest, more capable, most determinded," either legally or as illegal migrant workers. Their remiticances, estimated at some 800 million annually, "are what keep the damper down on uncontrollable social upheaval", Jesuit University reported. Its also estimated that "Nicaragua's GDP would have to grow more than 5% annually for the next 50 years to retain the productive levels of 1978, before our historic underdevelopment was intensified to the extreme by the US-financed war to destroy the revolution", by the wreckage left by "globalization," and by the "massive corruption" of the post 1990 US backed governments.

NIC - Global Trends 2015

An illustration of attitudes toward terrorism is the warning of Bush administration officials two months later that Nicaragua would be punished if its 2002 and 2006 elections were to be won by the the political forces that dared to resist US attack, the FSLN, and thus "do not share the values of the world community." Washington "cannot forget Nicaragua ended up a refuge for violent polictical extremists," in the 1980's.

There is some truth to that. Mananagua did serve as a refuge for social democratic political figures, poets and writers, religious figures, human rights activists, and others fleeing the death squads and security forces of the terrorists states installed and backed by the US. We are "reminded of the refuge daily by the continuing presence of some members of the FSLN .. who perpetrated these abominations," the State Department warned Nicaraguan voters. "Given their past record, why should we believe their statements that they have changed? We are confident that the Nicaraguan people will reflect on the nature and history of the candidates and choose wisely."

FT.com / World - US warns Nicaraguans not to back Ortega

The Nicaraguans didnt need the warnings. Their history was enough to tell them that, should they misbehave by electing the wrong government, as they did in 1984 in an election that the US refused to recognize becouse it couldnt control the outcome, then Nicaragua will again be considered a state sponsor of terrorism. The editors of Envio observed that "it is a safe bet that those who took up arms at a time when US state terrorism was killing, torturing, forcing disapearences and closing all political spaces will now be reclassified as terrorists." The "unimaginable and singlular tragedy of September 11 surely felt like the end of the world in the targeted country." But "Nicaragua experiences the end of the world nearly every day after the destruction the US government repeatedly wreaked on this country and its people." The attrocitiesof 9-11 may denounced as "Armageddon", but Nicaraguans that their country "lived its own Armageddon in excruciating slow motion under US assault and is now submerged in its dismal aftermath," having been reduced to the second poorest country in the hemisphere (after Haiti).

Revista Env�- The Armageddon Effect: The Final Test

Nicaragua and El Salvador are remembered as "relative success stories-and precisely the kind of success stories we need in the Middle East," one to be remedied by the new crusade for democracy.

Faith and Terrorism in the Muslim World - New York Times

Among the leading figures in the redeclared war on terror is John Negroponte, who ran the embassy in Honduras that was the base for the terrorist attacks on Nicaragua. He was chosen to to oversee the dimplomatic component of the current war on terror at the United Nations. The Central American war on terror was supervised by Elliot Abrams. After pleading guilty to misdermeaner counts, in the Iran-Contra affair, Abrams recieved a Christmas Eve pardon from President Bush in 1992, and was appointed by Bush II "to lead the National Security Council's office for Near East and North Africa's affairs,... the senior director job that oversees Arab-Israeli relations and US efforts to promote peace in the troubled region."


During Negroponte's unique tenure as ambassador, he secured Honduran military, logistical and political support for the controversial CIA paramilitary campaign to overthrow the Sandinista government. The career diplomat who worked quietly to boost the U.S. military and intelligence presence in Central America as ambassador to Honduras, he also participated in efforts to get the Honduran government to support the Contras after Congress banned direct U.S. aid to the rebels. Negroponte's profile has risen spectacularly with his appointments as ambassador to Iraq in 2004 and director of national intelligence in 2005.

Abrams is joined by Otto Reich, who was charged with running an illegal covert demoestic propganda campaign against Nicaragua, appointed temporary assistant secretary for Latin American affairs under Bush II, then designated special envoy for Western Hempisphere affairs. To replace Reich as assistant secretary, the administration nominated Roger Noriega, who "served in the State Department during the Reagan administration, helping forge fiercely anti populist policies towards Latin America;" - in other words, terrorist attrocites. Colin Powell served as national security adviser during the final stage of the terror, attrocites, and undermining of diplomacy in the 1980s in Central America.


US President George W. Bush (R) listens as former CIA director Robert Gates speaks in the Oval Office of the White House. Gates, the man nominated by President George W. Bush and President elect Barrack Obama to be US secretary of defense, recommended in the 1980s overt military action against Nicaragua, including air strikes and a naval quarantine of its ports. In earlier posts at top levels of the CIA, Gates figured in the Iran-Contra affair, in which he engaged in sins of omission if not commission, hesitating to make inquiries and pass warnings that might have headed off this abuse of power. As the CIA's top manager for intelligence analysis in the early 1980s he was accused of slanting intelligence to suit the predilections of the Reagan administration and his boss, Director William J. Casey.

The Negroponte File

The Robert Gates File

The Oliver North File

The Middle East Partnership Initiative: Promoting Democratization in a Troubled Region

President Obama has accused the Bush administration of "losing Latin America" and announced his intention to continue the vicious 47-year U.S. embargo on Cuba. He described the democratically elected governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua as a "‘vacuum to be filled."

YouTube - Obama and Latin America

FACTBOX: Obama's policies on Latin America | Politics | Reuters

In the openly imperial foreign policy chapter of his 2006 campaign book "The Audacity of Hope," Obama criticized "left-leaning populists" like "Venezuela's Hugo Chavez" for thinking that developing nations "should resist America's efforts to expand its hegemony" and for daring - imagine! - to "follow their own path to development." Such dysfunctional "rejection of the ideals of free markets and liberal democracy" along with "American" ideas like "the rule of law" and "democratic elections" - interesting terms for the heavily state-sponsored U.S. effort to impose authoritarian and corporate-state capitalist policy imperatives on impoverished nations - will only worsen the situation of the global poor, Obama claimed.

http://ebooks.dot5hosting.com/Biogra...0of%20Hope.pdf

Obama did not comment in "Audacity" on the remarkable respect the U.S. showed for "democratic elections" and "the rule of law" when it supported an attempted military coup to overthrow the democratically elected Chavez government (because of his opposition to the U.S neoliberal agenda) in April of 2002.

Venezuela coup linked to Bush team | World news | The Observer

Documents Show CIA Knew of Venezuela Coup

Venezuelafoia

http://www.oig.state.gov/documents/o...tion/13682.pdf

Obama also ignored a preponderance of evidence showing that the imposition of the "free market" corporate-neoliberal "Washington Consensus" has deepened poverty across the world in recent decades. Billions are forced to live in ever-more extreme poverty.

NIC - Global Trends 2015

http://www.loyola.edu/dept/politics/...trends2015.pdf

Media Omissions on Negroponte's Record



2/22/05

George W. Bush's February 17 nomination of John Negroponte to the newly created job of director of intelligence was the subject of a flurry of media coverage. But one part of Negroponte's resume was given little attention: his role in the brutal and illegal Contra war against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua in the mid-1980s.

From 1981 to 1985, Negroponte was the U.S. ambassador to Honduras, a country that was being used as a training and staging ground for the CIA-created and -backed Contra armies, who relied on a terrorist strategy of targeting civilians. Those years saw a massive increase in U.S. military aid to Honduras, and Negroponte was a key player in organizing training for the Contras and procuring weapons for the armies that the United States was building in order to topple the socialist Nicaraguan government (Extra!, 9-10/01).

Negroponte's ambassadorship was marked by another human rights scandal: the Honduran army's Battalion 316, which operated as a death squad that tortured, killed or disappeared "subversive" Hondurans--and at least one U.S. citizen, Catholic priest James Carney. Despite regular reporting of such crimes in the Honduran press, the human rights reports of Negroponte's embassy consistently failed to raise these issues. Critics contend that this was no accident: If such crimes had been acknowledged, U.S. aid to the country's military would have come under scrutiny, which could have jeopardized the Contra operations.

Many reports included brief mentions of Negroponte's past. The New York Times (2/18/05), for example, noted that "critics say" that Negroponte "turned a blind eye to human rights abuses" in Honduras. But the Times (like most mainstream reports) quoted no critics on the subject; to get a sense of what Negroponte's critics actually said, you had to tune into Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now (2/18/05), where Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive said that Negroponte

"essentially ran Honduras as the Reagan administration changed it from a small Central American country into a territorial battleship, if you will, to fight the Contra war and overthrow the Sandinista government. He was really the head person in charge of this whole operation, which became a massive paramilitary war in the early 1980s."

Kornbluh added that declassified documents from those years show Negroponte had "stepped out of being U.S. ambassador and kind of put on the hat of a C.I.A. station chief in pushing for the Contras to get more arms, in lobbying and meeting with very high Honduran officials to facilitate U.S. support for the Contras and Honduran cooperation, even after the U.S. Congress terminated official support for the Contra war."

The night of Bush's announcement, network news broadcasts woefully understated or misrepresented this history. On NBC Nightly News (2/17/05), reporter Andrea Mitchell glossed over Negroponte's Honduran record: "As Ronald Reagan's ambassador to Honduras, he was accused of ignoring death squads and America's secret war against Nicaragua."

While Negroponte might be accused of ignoring Honduran death squads, no one could credibly suggest he was ignoring "America's secret war against Nicaragua." The documentary evidence, as Kornbluh explained, suggests that he was intimately involved with running it.

ABC's Good Morning America Robin Roberts turned this reality on its head (2/18/05), noting that Negroponte's "entire life has been a lesson in quiet and measured diplomacy" and that "he generated controversy long after a stint in Honduras when he denied he knew anything about the work of Contra rebel death squads."

Some reporters simply soft-pedaled the history; as CNN reporter Kitty Pilgrim put it (2/17/05), "During his four-year stint as U.S. ambassador to Honduras, he had a difficult balancing act in the battle against Communism in the neighboring Sandinista government in Nicaragua." (Sandinista Nicaragua, of course, was not Communist, but a country with a mixed economy and regular elections, one of which voted the Sandinistas out of power in 1990.) Pilgrim's CNN colleague, Paula Zahn (2/17/05), complained that "the critics are already out there sniping at him."

Fox News reporter Carl Cameron (2/17/05) noted that "the only partisan criticism noted Negroponte's role as U.S. ambassador to Honduras in the '80s, when he played a key role in the Reagan administration's covert disruption of Communism in the Nicaragua." In this case, "covert disruption" stands in as a euphemism for a bloody guerrilla war that took the lives of thousands of civilians. Cameron went on to note that the "partisan" remarks "came from a member of the House, which has no vote on his nomination."

NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly made similar observations (2/17/05), noting that previous confirmation hearings generated "a lot of questions about the role he played during the early '80s when he was the ambassador to Honduras." Kelly seemed aware of this history, but thought it a settled matter: "He has already dealt with those issues and obviously answered them satisfactorily-- he was confirmed for that job at the United Nations."

Some pundits were remarkably lenient in the standards by which Negroponte should be judged. Fox News Channel commentator Charles Krauthammer explained (2/17/05) that "he was the ambassador in Honduras during the Contra war. So he clearly knows how to deal with clandestine operations. That was a pretty clandestine one for several years. And he didn't end up in jail, which is a pretty good attribute for him. A lot of others practically did."

In general, right-wing pundits and commentators were much more likely than mainstream news reporters to cite Negroponte's shady past-- as proof that he is the right man for the job. On CNBC (2/17/05), Tony Blankley happily summarized Negroponte's human rights record:

"Negroponte is not just some ambassador. He has a track record. Starting in Honduras in 1981, he was the ambassador who oversaw the management when the Argentines turned over the covert operations against the Nicaraguans. He took over that responsibility. He managed it operationally. The CIA was very impressed with the way he handled that."

After James Warren of the Chicago Tribune disagreed (calling the Contra war an "at times slimy operation"), Blankley offered a blunt response-- "Well, we won"-- which host Lawrence Kudlow endorsed: "We did win. Thank you, Tony. I was just going to say, you know, the forces of freedom triumphed with a little bit of help from the right country."

Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes took the same line (2/19/05):

"I would say on Central America, I give John Negroponte credit, along with people like Elliott Abrams and President Reagan, for creating democracy in all those countries in Central America, in Nicaragua, in El Salvador and in Honduras, where Marxists were going to take over, they fought them back."

By way of balance, Fox pundit and NPR correspondent Juan Williams noted that while he didn't "have any love for Marxists," it was important to note "what death squads do to people, and you understand that nuns were involved, Fred, then you think--wait a second--excess is not to be tolerated in the name of democracy."

Barnes' response: "Well, now that we have democracy, there are no death squads."

Reviving Cold War Reporting on Nicaragua

4/5/05

As the Bush administration carries out what the New York Times (4/5/05) describes as a "concerted effort" to block the return of the left-wing Sandinista party to power in Nicaragua, U.S. media are returning to the kind of distorted reporting on Nicaragua that characterized coverage during Washington's war against that country in the 1980s. The New York Times' April 5 article on the administration's anti-Sandinista campaign provides a prime example of this one-sided and inaccurate media treatment.

The article, by Ginger Thompson, characterized the U.S. attempt to overthrow the Sandinista government as part of "the global struggle against Communism"-- though Nicaragua under the Sandinistas had a mixed economy, multiple opposition parties and a very active opposition press, features that were not found in actual Communist countries. She refers to Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista president of Nicaragua, as a "revolutionary strongman," even though he was elected to the presidency in 1984 with 67 percent of the vote, in balloting that international observers found to be "free, fair and hotly contested" (Extra!, 10-11/87).

Referring to the Sandinista-led government of the 1980s and the U.S.-sponsored Contra rebels as opposing "armies," Thompson wrote, "The armies fought each other to a standstill, until both sides agreed to elections in 1990, which Mr. Ortega lost." This summary leaves out the election that Ortega won in 1984, and wrongly suggests that the 1990 elections were held because of Contra pressure, when the Nicaraguan constitution at that time required elections to be held every six years. (That sentence also implies that the Contras directed their fight against the Nicaraguan army, although in fact they chiefly targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure--see Nicaragua: The Price of Intervention, Peter Kornbluh, pp. 39-50.)

Though the article's focus is on the United States' opposition to Ortega, Ortega is never quoted; the article says that he "did not accept several requests for an interview." Despite a reference to "extensive talks with Mr. Ortega's supporters," no members of this group are quoted either. (A supporter of a Sandinista rival to Ortega is quoted at the end of the piece, explaining why in his view Ortega is not likely to ever be re-elected.)

The piece does, however, quote an anonymous "senior State Department official" who repeatedly makes unsubstantiated charges about Ortega and the Sandinistas (e.g., "The Sandinista Party that Daniel Ortega represents is not a democratic party," the Sandinistas are using their influence to "extort the country.").

New York Times policy supposedly discourages the use of anonymous sources. "We do not grant anonymity to people who use it as cover for a personal or partisan attack," a February 25, 2004 statement released by the paper declared. "If pejorative opinions are worth reporting and cannot be specifically attributed, they may be paraphrased or described after thorough discussion between writer and editor." When an anonymous source is attacking an official enemy, it appears, the rules do not apply.


(See also Extra! 10-11/87, The Sandinistas won't submit to free elections and Managua -- Terror Central?)

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3048

By Jim Naureckas

Imagine that the United States government was under attack from a foreign power that organized a guerrilla army to attack ordinary civilians, killing tens of thousands. And suppose that opposition politicians and media outlets in the U.S. were obviously and in some cases openly receiving support from that same foreign power.

Now imagine, difficult as it may be, that during the attacks the U.S. government allowed those media outlets to remain open. And the politicians who were cooperating with the foreign enemy weren’t jailed—instead, the administration allowed them to continue to run for office and serve as opposition legislators.

The president who carried out such policies would undoubtedly be considered an incredible defender of civil liberties—by those who didn’t think such a policy was completely insane.

If, however, the leader in question was not the president of the United States, but instead the president of a small country that had been declared an official U.S. enemy, then such policies would be seen as a mere smokescreen concealing a dictatorial, even totalitarian agenda.

Such is the verdict on Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, whom the New York Times (11/7/06) recently described, along with his Sandinista movement, as having “swept to power in 1979, toppling the Somoza dynasty of right-wing dictators friendly to the United States and setting up an authoritarian left-wing government.”

In 1984, that “authoritarian” got 67 percent of the vote in an election that was characterized by international observers as “free, fair and hotly contested” (Extra!, 10–11/87). But that election, being inconvenient for the U.S.’s anti-Sandinista propaganda, was flushed down the memory hole almost immediately after it occurred, allowing the Washington Post (11/12/06) to write summaries of history like this one:

"Through a controversial, decade-long campaign of ambushes and sabotage, the Contras, estimated to number as high as 12,000 at their peak, helped pressure Ortega into holding elections in 1990 in which voters swept him from office."

Aside from the overly polite description of the Contras’ murderous campaign of terror as “ambushes and sabotage,” the fact is that the 1990 presidential election was held six years after the last one—precisely as scheduled by the Sandinista-written constitution.

Now that Ortega has been elected to the Nicaraguan presidency again (albeit with about half the support he got in 1984), U.S. media are almost willing to forgive him for resisting Washington’s attempts to overthrow him. “It’s been all about peace and reconciliation—is this a new Ortega?” asked NPR (11/5/06). “He says he’s changed from those days as a U.S.-hating Marxist revolutionary,” CNN’s Miles O’Brien reported (11/7/06).

Since the unprovoked war against Nicaragua is apparently so much water under the bridge, maybe you can’t fault reporters for getting that ancient history wrong. But surely they can remember things that happened, say, a month earlier? Not really—not if it puts the United States in an unfavorable light, anyway.

For example, an article in the November 11 Newsweek about Iran-Contra figure Oliver North’s involvement in the Nicaraguan election ended by noting that while Bush administration officials were concerned about an Ortega victory, “officials are wary of saying too much—or backing one of several rival candidates—lest they too be accused of meddling.”

As a matter of fact, the United States had already been criticized for interfering in the Nicaraguan election—officially, by the Organization of American States. As Robert Naiman pointed out in the Huffington Post (10/25/06), election monitors from the OAS explicitly singled out the U.S. government and specific U.S. officials for criticism. But even though the news of the OAS statement was carried by Reuters (10/22/06), neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post could find room for it.

Please see the sidebar to this article: Inexplicable Tongue-Lashing