Posted on 10/12/2001 1:29:23 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
As America embarks on a long-term war against international terrorism, it is essential that President Bush have his foreign policy team in place. Unfortunately, one Democratic senator is still fighting the Cold War and is settling old ideological scores by blocking Senate action on a key State Department nominee.
Otto Reich was nominated on July 12 to be assistant secretary of state for Western Hemispheric Affairs. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has not even bothered to schedule Fa confirmation hearing for Reich, and has no plans to do so. The reasons have nothing to do with Reich's competence or qualifications, and everything to do with Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd's affinity for Cuba's Fidel Castro and the communist Sandanista regime in Nicaragua.
During the 1980's, Reich was a key player in the Reagan administration's efforts to fight the spread of communism in Central America, particularly in Nicaragua. Reich served as Latin America director of the Agency for International Development, and later headed the Office of Public Diplomacy in the State Department, where he countered communist propaganda in Central America. In 1986, Reich was appointed ambassador to Venezuela. Reagan's policies were ultimately vindicated as democracy triumphed in the region.
Especially jarring for opponents of U.S. intervention were the results of the 1990 free elections in Nicaragua, where the Sandanistas, the darlings of American leftists like Dodd, were soundly defeated. Apparently, Dodd can't forgive Reich for being right.
Reich is also intolerable to leftists because of his staunch opposition to the brutal and oppressive dictatorship in Cuba. Reich's father fled to Cuba from Austria in 1939 to escape Hitler's persecution of the Jews (Reich's grandparents perished in the Holocaust). Sensing the onset of another totalitarian regime following the triumph of Castro's communist revolution in 1959, Walter Reich ran again, this time to the United States, with his family in tow. Otto Reich was 14.
Reich doesn't need to read the countless international reports that document Cuba's human rights violations to recognize Castro's tyranny. His support of the trade embargo and of U.S.-led efforts to hasten Castro's demise put Reich squarely at odds with Dodd and others who would like to normalize relations with Cuba.
There is nothing wrong with having a vigorous debate about the future of U.S.-Cuba relations, but the confirmation process is not the place for it.
In addition to Reich's long and distinguished tenure as a diplomat, it may be appropriate to have a strong critic of the Castro regime directing U.S. policy in Latin America in light of America's new war on terrorism. As Bush has made clear, the United States must use every resource at its disposal to fight the global terror network, including governments that provide funding and refuge for terrorists. This effort cannot be restricted to the Middle East, for we know the global terror network has a haven just 90 miles from our shores. According to the State Department, Cuba takes its place alongside Syria, Iran, Iraq and Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Now more than ever, Bush needs his foreign policy team, and if Dodd is too consumed by ideological hang-ups to allow Reich's nomination to move forward, then Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, should put politics aside and schedule a hearing for Reich. That objections to Reich are anything but ideological score-settling is demonstrated in Senate Democrats' refusal to give Reich a hearing where he could refute the baseless allegations leveled against him.
Particularly egregious are the whispered accusations of Reich's involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal. Despite exhaustive investigations by Congress and by independent counsel Laurence Walsh that left no stone unturned in an effort to smear Reagan administration officials, not a single shred of evidence indicates that Reich knew about or had anything to do with the sale of arms to Iran or the illegal diversion of funds to the Contra freedom fighters in Nicaragua. Reich's only link to Iran-Contra is that the investigation turned up unrelated documents that led the General Accounting Office to conclude that Reich and the Office of Public Diplomacy was overzealous in its attempt to influence American media in support of the Contras.
It is entirely appropriate for senators to demand an explanation from Reich about this incident and to ask tough questions about his lobbying activities in the private sector. If the senators conclude that Reich behaved unethically, they can vote not to confirm him. However, had there been any damning piece of evidence against Reich it would have surfaced by now. After a months-long campaign of disinformation by Dodd's staff and their leftist allies, all that remains are slanderous accusations fueled only by ideological grudges.
If Dodd insists on opposing nominees because he doesn't like their politics, fine. But American foreign policy should not suffer because one senator is still upset the Sandanistas lost and is afraid to voice his opposition in a public hearing. If not a national crisis, at least the principle of fairness should compel Dodd to temporarily put aside partisan politics and let Reich have a hearing and a vote.
Villarreal, a Houstonian, is national chairman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly.
A point that needs to be made: The people of Iraq are suffering because of Sadam Hussein and not by the embargo,
just as the people of Cuba are not suffering because of the U.S. embargo but because of Castro and his communist regime.
I hope a lot of people are sensitive to events and that it has opened their eyes about how the Democrats work.
The bottom line!
Nervous?
Nervous? Only because my fellow americans have completely forgotten their way, and have turned over MY country to empire builders. Have fun, I'm leavin it to y'all.
Don't let the door hit you in the face on your way out...
I don't care whether you bump this thread but I do care if you have all the facts. Check this out:
Hillary Clinton and the Third Way [Excerpted from Hillary Clinton and the Radical Left by David Horowitz]--- And that is why they hate conservatives. They hate you because you are killers of their dream. Because you are defenders of a Constitution that thwarts their cause. They hate you because your "reactionary" commitment to individual rights, to a single standard and to a neutral and limited state obstructs their progressive designs. They hate you because you are believers in property and its rights as the cornerstones of prosperity and human freedom; because you do not see the market economy as a mere instrument for acquiring personal wealth and political war chests, to be overcome in the end by bureaucratic schemes.
Conservatives who think progressives are misinformed idealists will forever be blind-sided by the malice of the left-by the cynicism of those who pride themselves on principle, by the viciousness of those who champion sensitivity, by the intolerance of those who call themselves liberal, and by the ruthless disregard for the well-being of the downtrodden by those who preen themselves as social saints.
Conservatives are caught by surprise because they see progressives as merely misguided, when in fact they are fundamentally misdirected. They are the messianists of a religious faith. But it is a false faith and a self-serving religion. Since the redeemed future that justifies their existence and rationalizes their hypocrisy can never be realized, what really motivates progressives is a modern idolatry: their limitless passion for the continuance of Them. [End Excerpt]
"Villarreal, a Houstonian, is national chairman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly."
I wondered what this...sensible-ness was doing in the Houston Chronicle. I was caused by an alien presence!
Yes! A Republican point of view!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.