In the aforementioned post by Glenn Reynolds about the contras and Antiwar.com (with bonus balderdash from Stephen Schwartz), Reynolds writes:
- Yeah, the refrain’s a familiar one, since it’s always the same: Our guys are the bad guys, the only atrocities are by our guys, the murderous thugs our guys oppose are actually pure-minded agrarian reformers, and the U.S. is wrong and should get out. That’s the story from these guys every single time.
Reynolds didn’t link to the offending post by Justin Raimondo because, of course, NOTHING in it praised the Sandinistas or any other “pure-minded agrarian reformers.” In fact, Raimondo specifically dissed the Commies:
- Che Guevara was a totalitarian thug, but I don’t recall hearing that ever did anything like cut off a woman’s breasts. And why, pray tell, must we choose between a dead Commie and a bunch of “ex”-fascists hustling t-shirts?
A quick search for the term “Sandinistas” on Antiwar.com turns up this first result. Some choice snippets (and by all means, go read the whole thing if you think I’m cherrypicking):
- The Sandinistas were lionized on the Left, much as Fidel Castro and his ragged guerrilla army were upheld as the new symbols of a revolutionary generation in the heyday of the radicalized 1960s. The repression against domestic dissidents, Miskito Indians and trade unionists, was ignored by the Left or else rationalized as “revolutionary.” …
It is one thing to oppose whitewashing the crimes of the Sandinistas, and quite another to advocate aiding the so-called contras – the US-supported-and-subsidized armed force that was engaged in overthrowing them. Radosh explains his transition from a principled noninterventionist to an advocate of contra aid as follows:
“As a result of what I observed on the trip, I eventually became a firm supporter of contra aid. While congressional liberals were waging a campaign to cut off all such military aid, I had come to understand that it was only the threat of a fully capable contra army that made the Sandinista leaders even contemplate any internal loosening up.”
NO THIRD FORCE?
As to why such an army could not arise indigenously, and overthrow the Sandinistas without being turned into the sock puppet of the Americans, is a question that contra aid supporters could not answer then, and will not address today. For the answer is that there was, indeed, such an army, one led by Commandante Eden Pastora, the leader of the original army that overthrew the US-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza. Pastora was a popular hero who sought to use his political weight to organize a third force, one committed to political pluralism that would be independent of both the US and Moscow. For his trouble he was targeted by the CIA and marked for assassination, barely escaping with his life to Costa Rica, where, today, he is a fisherman. But for Radosh, it was and is a black-and-white issue, the contras versus the Sandinistas, with no room for a third force.
That Reynolds is a pathological liar should surprise no one — it’s almost a prerequisite for his profession, which he might actually practice instead of teach if he were smart enough to ignore Suleyman Ahmad.
UPDATE: Oh, goody. Suleyman Ahmad resumes his creepy correspondence with me, hurling another revealing “insult” my way:
- I know it hurts you, but you are ignored and I appear on TV and in print all the time.
Hey, Suleyman, how’s the lawsuit coming? You could be on Fox News AND Court TV!