Maybe a historical account of cause and effect that could be agreeable to both sides would enable a more nuanced foreign policy discussion in the large political discourse. Until then, I guess I’ll be stuck in the margins with the rest of you.

Unfortunately self-critical perspective seems to take at least a generation to develop within enough of the electorate to be politically viable.

You’re right. I know you’re right. I think I have a problem. There’s a part of me that believes that people like Honeyko can be reasoned with, that they’ll reconsider their positions if presented with rational arguments. I know it’s probably not true, yet still I try. It’s like a misguided kind of optimism in humanity. I’ll definitely try to resist in the future. Maybe every time I’m tempted to respond to someone like Honeyko, I’ll just have a drink, instead.

This could work.

You say I did defend the Sandinistas, I still do it, and I shouldn’t “play dumb.”

Okay, please show me where I defended the Sandinistas. Find the sentence. Copy and paste it for all to see.

If you can’t (and you can’t because I didn’t; in fact, I pointed out that the Sandinistas were guilty of atrocities), I hope you’ll be man enough to admit your passions got the best of you and you falsely accused me of saying something I didn’t say and holding a position I don’t hold.

But I’ll say again that terrorism is wrong no matter who uses it (though terrorists and loyalists on the left and right would disagree) and that frequently both sides in a military conflict will be guilty of atrocities. Again, these are not radical notions.

I would have hoped never to say “McCain is right”, but the quote mentioned is spot on. We should not have left Afghanistan as we did, and while I am as against the war in Iraq as anyone, I am proud that we are at least attempting to rebuild that which we destroyed.

Isn’t that how the “Republican revolution” ended, too?

The only way to prevent your decent and illuminating discussion from being destroyed by people like Honeyko is to ignore them completely.

Seriously. Just. Don’t. Respond.

APS

Yes, you did, and yes you do. Don’t play dumb.

> Maybe, in your eyes, condemning the use of terrorism to
> fight an enemy means that I must have supported that enemy.

This is simply moral-equivalizing which conveniently dovetails with Sandinista propaganda and which tidely boxes up ALL recipients of US military help as terrorists. Oooo, that icky-poo raygun “terrorizing” the oppressed people of Nicaragua. …who you may observe weren’t fleeing to Honduras and Costa Rica when Somaza was in power.

These people were fighting for the “freedom” to impose a Taliban-like government. In fact, many of them went on to endorse and serve in the Taliban. Others went on to form al-Qaeda. At least two of them then orchestrated the September 11 attacks. They weren’t motivated by the Soviets’ command and control economy. They were motivated by the Soviets’ atheism. And yes, they were fighting “Godless military” leaders in the Soviets. Is that really worse than the militant, God-fearing, Sharia-based government that eventually took root?

Maybe we had to back them at the time, because the Soviet threat was greater. I’m not convinced. But to call them “freedom fighters” still today instead of the lesser of two evils betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of our foreign policy history. It’s not that the mujaheddin “didn’t have the same concept of freedom as Cato,” it’s that the vast majority of them were thuggish, murdering religious zealots with no concept of freedom at all.

How do we really define this?

Freedom from what… right? Isn’t that what we at least THINK when we hear it.

I would suggest that at the time we were thinking these people were seeking freedom from 2 things…

1) Godless military leaders…
Were the people (generally religious) fighting a people who were (offically) athiest “freedom fighter”s?

2) A command and control economy dictated from Moscow.

Should we not call them Freedom fighters just because they didn’t have the same concept of freedom as CATO? Can freedom come a bit at a time – and from where they were at at the time? (no real gov. – but lots of oppression)…

I don’t know if you read what I posted (if so, you might want to work on your comprehension skills), but I didn’t defend the Sandinistas. So, I don’t really know what you’re so angry about.

Maybe, in your eyes, condemning the use of terrorism to fight an enemy means that I must have supported that enemy. But that’s really simplistic and silly, when you think about it (if you choose to think about it). Like I said, rejecting terrorism as a tool in wartime is not a radical idea.

Shut the fuck up with the dissembling bullshit, and deal with the matter of you being a lying sack peddler of Sandinista propaganda regarding, among others, the Mosquitos they tried to exterminate, and Eden Pastora. They drove damn near everybody on the east coast up into Honduras and Guatemala while guys like you sat around and gave a big runny I-don’t-give-a-shit.

IMO there is no bigger jerk-off on the face of the earth than useful-idiot apologists and water-carriers for socialist juntas, and that is you pal. Yeah, yeah, bore me now with your collection of sources written by circle-jerking Marxist assholes. Fuck them too. There are jerk-offs of all stripes, of course, but the ass-clowns still defending Soviet-aligned tyrants are the worst.

The Sandinistas were opportunistic scumbags who could wait to drive around in big Mercades and loot the whole country the second they were in power.

Even though I still have to disagree that cops are “rarely brutal and almost never corrupt” (“rarely,” I can see in a statistical, big picture sense; “almost never corrupt” is, I think, demonstrably untrue), I agree with your above statement 100%.