Posted on 02/16/2008 10:05:40 PM PST by bshomoic
Short answer: No, he should have been condemned, and was, for allowing it to go forward, then not supporting it when things went bad. (I have a friend who was Legionnaire in Chad in the '80s. Apparently when you you're going on an operation where you're on your own and you'll be hung out to dry if anything goes wrong the standing joke is "And the Americans will provide the air support.")
It was a different kind of operation in a different time. The Bay of Pigs was a battle in the Cold War. One that America lost. After the Bay of Pigs US strategy changed from direct confrontation of the communists and support for local guerrilla organizations to support for the Latin American military establishment. In the DR in 1965, Brazil in 1966, Chile in 1973 and in other places less famous no doubt military coups were supported by the US. The US also supported (explicitly or implicitly) military counter insurgency efforts throughout the region, some of which used means that were not very nice. The US came to be viewed by people in Latin America as Cynical and hypocritical - democracy for America, repressive dictatorships for the rest of the hemisphere.
The Carter administration changed this practice in the name of "human rights". Carter's strategy was simple - let the communists win. Then they would love us and everyone would be oh so happy. This didn't work well.
In 1981 when Reagan came to power he was faced with a rapidly militarizing communist regime in Nicaragua and major active insurgencies, supported by the leftist Jesuit Order of the Catholic Church, in Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, and to a lesser extent in a lot of other places. Reagan's Plan A, under Al Haig was to go back to the Johnson/Nixon strategy of propping up military regimes with military and financial aid.
In 1982 this strategy fell apart when Argentina, in an effort to rally public support against the communist insurgency invaded the Falklands and went to war with the UK. After getting stomped by the Brits in the Falklands the Junta resigned and an elected government took over. They pulled Argentine aid and advisors out of El Salvador. El Salvador was in dire straights and something had to be done. In desperation, to try to get the Democratic Congress to send aid to replace what the Argenines had pulled someone proposed a radical propaganda operation - elections in El Salvador. The new strategy, using democratic practices as tools of counter insurgency worked remarkably well and gave rise to "Project Democracy" an effort to spread democratic reforms throughout Latin America and elsewhere. In 1989 the five Jesuits who were the political leadership of the El Salvadoran insurgency, the FMLA, were assassinated, elections deposed the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the cold war effectively ended in Latin America. Colombia was and is still under assault by the drug cartels but communism and "Liberation Theology" are mostly dead.
Something else remarkable happened - the Latin American people's view of the US started to change. We came to be viewed as supporters of democracy, human rights and economic reform.
Flash forward 13 years. The Venezuelan coup attempt took place virtually in a vacuum. In all honesty I doubt the US had anything to do with the planning or the execution. By failing to denounce the coup quickly, the National Security Adviser Rice did a great deal to undo what had been achieved in US, Latin American relations over the past 20 years. Much of the responsibility for the rise of the left there over the past five years can be laid at her feet.
McCain would be better off if he picked a Latino from a battleground state. Mel Martinez would be ideal.
Rice as vice pres would seal the conservative movement’s doom.
If he’s going to pick a Black person it should be a conservative with solid credentials. That would be J.C. Watts.
“Rice as vice pres would seal the conservative movement’s doom.”
Yup, the final nail in the coffin.
No sale.
Maybe so, but IMHO she is not what we needed for a Secretary of State. She obviously favors the Palestinians over Israel, and apparently she has no concept of the seriousness of the danger posed by fundamentalist Islam to the western world.
With some other president we would probably be better off with her as VP instead of SoS, but not as a replacement for a septuagenarian president like McNutt with a hyper-volatile temperament that is almost guaranteed to trigger cardiac arrest at some stressful point in a four year term.
If we must have a lady vice president, and I suppose we must sooner or later, Rice would be far preferable to any of the ultra-liberal fire breathing Amazons who are typical of Democrat female politicians. But I am sure that there are many conservative Republican ladies out there who are better qualified to serve in that office than Ms Rice. I can't think of any offhand, but there just has to be some out there somewhere.
>>Polls say Obama would whip McCain by 50 per cent if they went head to head now.<<
A better article would have cited an actual poll so it could be checked.
Nor does he need someone who, along with Prez G.W., sold Israel down the river and sucked up to the Palestinians.
Rice on Social Policy: On Abortion she says she is “reluctantly Pro-choice”.
That's what scares them.
;-)
After all the time I’ve spent trying to convince myself and others that voting for McCain won’t be quite as bad as voting for the Dem, now he’s going to pull this?
If it’s true, I’m done with him. He must choose a conservative.
He MUST!
I didn't even know Hillary picked her VP yet let alone it being Janet Reno
So what you are saying is that 20% of us FReepers would make a better VP choice?
I agree with you. Your only mistake was that 80% of FReepers would be a better choice than Dr. Rice. She was a so-so as NSA, but she was a disaster as SoS. She re-defined the ‘Pedro Princple ‘. Her positive qualities; 1)great taste in footwear, 2) somewhat better than mediocre ability on the piano.
Her drawbacks; North Korea, the soon to be terrorist entity called PaliLand, Russia (remember, she was an Xpert), and HugoLand.
To Dr. Rice’s credit, I will admit she did accomplish something that I never thought could be done, and that was to make Colin Powell appear to be competent as the SoS.
There you go, a great choice! IMHO Watts would be a great choice for FIRST place on a GOP ticket, why haven't the GOP bigwigs made him a deal he can't refuse to run for it?
Oh yeah, now I remember why, the GOP "leadership" is riddled with country club liberals like Christy Todd Whitman and her multiple liberal PACs loaded with wealthy RINOs who are still resentful over being pushed aside by the Reagan revolution. Those folks are the primary reason I no longer consider myself a Republican. I will remain registered GOP just to be able to have a voice in nominating Republican local and state officials, US Senators, and Congressmen who I still support. But after 48 years of voting straight Republican tickets I am no longer committed to vote for the GOP presidential nominee, and I won't unless he or she meets at least my minimum standards of fitness for the office.
In case anyone has forgotten Christy Todd Whitman here is a short account of her recent political activities and the kind of people and PACs that she organizes and works with to retake the party for the old guard liberal RINO faction that owned it for generations before Reagan kicked in the door:
"In early 2005, Whitman released a book entitled It's My Party, Too: Taking Back the Republican Party... And Bringing the Country Together Again in which she criticizes the policies of the George W. Bush administration and its electoral strategy, which she views as divisive. She has formed a political action committee called It's My Party Too-PAC (IMP-PAC) that she intended to help elect moderate Republicans in 2006 and 2008 at all levels of government. She has allied her PAC with the Republican Main Street Partnership, The Wish List, the Republican Majority for Choice, Republicans for Choice, Republicans for Environmental Protection and The Log Cabin Republicans. Eventually, the IMP-PAC went (according to its website) under the auspices of the Republican Leadership Council."
If that's the future of the Republican party I want no part of it or in it. Actually, IMHO if that's the future of the party the party has no future, and conservatives may as well start working toward constructing a true conservative party that could be large enough to hold the balance of power in Congress. Such a party would in many cases hold the key to passing legislation, confirming judicial appointments, and imposing cloture on filibusters, and consequently could often have as much influence on the fate of proposed legislation as either of the other two by bargaining for concessions in exchange for it's support for the final compromise version. Not an ideal situation, but not much worse than what we have now, and better than what it appears we are looking at for the near term future.
We may as well face it. Conservatives have never been the majority in the GOP, it was Reagan Democrats and pragmatic independents allied with GOP conservatives who gave the Reagan Era party it's fragile conservative patina. But that awkward conglomeration of differing interests and political persuasions has fallen apart over the last two decades, and the results of that inevitable dissolution are now being seen in this current primary race. Unless drastic changes are made in the conventional two-party system I see only a long stretch of liberal control over the federal government that will no doubt far outlast me at my age, and IMHO could easily become the final phase of the Great American Experiment in self governance.
McCain should pick the best person for the job. Skin color is irrelevant.
Leftwing identity politics is bad enough. This me-too-ism on our side makes me want to puke.
At CPAC, Senator John McCain promised:
I intend to nominate judges who have proven themselves worthy of our trust that they take as their sole responsibility the enforcement of laws made by the people’s elected representatives, judges of the character and quality of Justices Roberts and Alito, judges who can be relied upon to respect the values of the people whose rights, laws and property they are sworn to defend.
If he reneges, he will earn as much ire as W did with Miers.
As I said, he can’t be that stupid.
Come on, you have to know that.
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