Reagan's Third-World Reign of Terror

As the nation pays tribute to Ronald "Dutch" Reagan on the occasion of
the 100th anniversary of his birth, media coverage is every bit as
laudatory as when he turned 90. I wrote in 2001 about PBS's fawning
tributes on the Charlie Rose show and the Jim Lehrer NewsHour.
Then, as now, one of the most glaring omissions was the human cost of
his foreign policies. In the interest of filling out the Reagan
portrait, let us consider a few regions unfortunate enough to capture
his attention, starting with Central America.

In January 1981, the newly inaugurated Reagan inherited Jimmy Carter's
policy of supporting a Salvadoran government controlled by a military
that, along with the security forces and affiliated death squads, killed
about 10,000 civilians in 1980. In the first 27 months of the Reagan
administration, perhaps another 20,000 civilians were killed. El
Salvador's labor movement was decimated, the opposition press
exterminated, opposition politicians murdered or driven into exile, the
church martyred.

In April 1983, seeking to shore up shaky public and congressional
support for continued aid to El Salvador, Reagan went on national
television before a joint session of Congress and -- with a straight
face -- praised the Salvadoran government for "making every effort to
guarantee democracy, free labor unions, freedom of religion, and a free
press." The Great Communicator/Prevaricator achieved his objective; aid
-- and blood -- continued to flow.

In neighboring Nicaragua, the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship
slaughtered perhaps 40,000 civilians from 1977 to 1979 in a desperate
bid to hold power. Candidate Reagan was sad to see Somoza go, and once
in office his administration turned to officers from Somoza's hated
National Guard to spearhead a "liberation" movement. Known as the
contras, they never managed to hold a single Nicaraguan town in their
eight years as Reagan's proxy army, though they were quite proficient at
raping, torturing and killing defenseless civilians. Tens of thousands
of Nicaraguans died in a war that never would have been were it not for
good ol' Dutch.

A common criticism of Reagan is that this self-proclaimed fighter
against the scourge of terrorism traded with a designated "terrorist
state" -- the hostage-holding fundamentalist regime in Iran -- to generate
funds for the contras after Congress turned off the tap. That's true
as far as it goes. But the contras themselves were terrorists, as were
those elements of the Honduran army that the CIA and Ollie North
employed to help the contras, as was the notorious Salvadoran air force
that assisted in the contra resupply effort. All murdered noncombatants
to achieve political objectives. If they were "terrorists" -- and if
words have meaning, they were -- what does that make their paymaster and
cheerleader in the Oval Office?

In Guatemala, after the "born-again butcher" Efrain Rios Montt
implemented in 1982 a scorched-earth military campaign that left
thousands of Indian civilians dead, Reagan was furious. Not at our
blood-soaked ally, but at Amnesty International and others who
documented his depridations. Rios Montt was getting a "bum rap," Reagan
whined.

In Southeast Asia, Reagan picked up where President Carter and Zbigniew
Brzezinski left off in collaborating with the Chinese government to
support Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge, which had been driven from
power in 1979 by a Vietnamese government that had grown weary of the
Khmer Rouge atttacking villages on Vietnam's side of the border. Along
with two hapless non-communist Cambodian guerrilla groups, the ousted
Khmer Rouge utilized neighboring Thailand -- with the blessing and backing
of the U.S. and China -- as a base from which to launch attacks inside
Cambodia.

A bit odd, Reagan backing communist mass murderers. But he did so for a
high-minded principle: self-determination. So strongly did he believe
in this principle that he instructed his U.N. Ambassador to recognize
the deposed Khmer Rouge, rather than the regime imposed by Vietnam, as
the legitimate government of Cambodia.

Alas, it was all an act. Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Indonesia
continued to occupy East Timor, the island it had invaded in 1975 with
the blessing of the Ford administration. In this case, Reagan chose to
oppose the Timorese resistance and support the Indonesian occupiers.
Hey, what good are principles if they're not flexible - or disposable?

To give Reagan his due, a crucial difference between the occupations
must be noted: Vietnam's (which he opposed) ended a bloodbath;
Indonesia's (which he supported) constituted a bloodbath.

In southern Africa, Reagan was an enthusiastic champion of South
Africa's illegal occupation of Namibia and vicious destabilization of
Angola and Mozambique. He considered the apartheid government a
card-carrying member of the "Free World" and thus worthy of a
"constructive engagement" policy. Like Dick Cheney, he dismissed Nelson
Mandela's African National Congress as communist terrorists.

Reagan's African heroes were Zairian kleptocrat Mobutu Sese Seko and
Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi. When Savimbi's horrific human
rights record could no longer be denied, even some conservatives who had
once sung his praises turned against him. Reagan stood steadfast. He
had earlier hailed Savimbi as a "freedom fighter," just as he had
elevated the Nicaraguan contras and the extremist Islamic
fundamentalists fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan (many of whom are
now fighting us in alliance with the Taliban) to "the moral equivalent
of the Founding Fathers."

By providing apologetics, diplomatic support and/or military aid to some
of the worst governments, rebel forces and terror-prone proxy armies of
the 1980s, Reagan was an accomplice in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
That's a big part of his legacy, and it's no cause for celebration.