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Reagan:
Enabler of Atrocities
by Robert Parry
No! Wait!!
Telling the truth is not allowed!
When you’re listening to the many
tributes to Reagan, often for his talent making Americans
feel better about themselves, you might want to spend a minute thinking
about the many atrocities
in Latin America and elsewhere that Reagan aided, covered up or
shrugged off in his inimitable "aw shucks" manner.
After all, the true measure of a president shouldn’t be his style or
how he made us feel but rather
what he did with his extraordinary power, what were the consequences
for real people, either for good or ill.
Yet, even as the United States celebrates Reagan’s centennial birthday
and lavishes praise on his
supposed accomplishments, very little time has been spent reflecting on
the unnecessary bloodbaths
that Reagan enabled in many parts of the world.
Those grisly deaths and ugly tortures get whisked away as if they were
just small necessities in Reagan’s
larger success “winning the Cold War” – even though the competition
between the United States and the
Soviet Union was already winding down before Reagan arrived on the
national scene. See Reagan's ‘Tear Down This Wall’ Myth.”]
Yet, Reagan’s Cold War obsessions helped unleash right-wing “death
squads” and murderous
militaries on the common people in many parts of the Third World, but
nowhere worse than in Latin America.
In the 1970s and 1980s, as Latin American security forces were
sharpening themselves into finely
honed killing machines, Reagan was there as an ardent defender, making
excuses for the atrocities,
and sending money and equipment to make the forces even more lethal.
He raised taxes.
He sold weapons from the future to terrorists.
He asked the Iranian terrorists to hold their American hostages longer.
He only signed nuke treaties when the stars were alligned properly.
He allowed the AIDS probelm to bloom into a full-blown crisis - killing millions.
His policies killed jobs almost as bad as Der Monkey Fuhrer's did.
He invaded Grenada to cover-up his Lebanon screw-up that killed 215 Marines.
He was a terrible president - but the GOP, unlike back-stabbing Democrats, stands by their man