Thanks, Ronnie, For The Debacle In Latin America

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That the Iran-Contra scandal didn't cost Reagan his entire career is a travesty. 'Sure the Iran-Contra scandal was a worse threat to American democracy than Watergate -- short-circuiting our whole system of government, as opposed to diddling an election that was a lock anyway,' writes Tom Carson in The Village Voice. 'But nobody was about to impeach smiling Ron over it, partly because nobody really understood how it worked.' Mark Weisbrot from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) suggests that Reagan's charisma probably bailed him out of hot water several times. 'The Great Communicator, as he was called, was capable of charming millions of Americans with his soothing, grandfatherly demeanor. In 1984 there were polls indicating that most of those who voted to re-elect him disagreed with him on the issues.'

Then there's El Salvador and Guatemala, where tens of thousands of innocent civilians -- mostly Mayan indigenas -- were systematically slaughtered by roaming death squads, many of whom were armed by Washington during the 1980s and trained at the infamous School of the Americas in Fort Benning, GA. In 1999 the United Nations determined that the Guatemalan massacres were not just a side note to the country's 36-year civil war and constituted 'genocide.' As Weisbrot reports, 'these massacres reached their peak under the rule of Mr. Reagan's ally, the Guatemalan General Rios Montt.' The United States Congress actually stopped funding the right-wing Guatemalan government's bloody drive to intimidate its rural Indians into submission during the early 80's. But Reagan personally flew to Guatemala City to meet with Montt and pledge his continued economic support, albeit through other, more clandestine channels, on the very day that the Guatemalan military wiped out an entire village in the western highlands and reportedly swung infant children against brick walls to smash their heads, writes Daniel Wilkinson in his excellent, yet sobering book Silence on the Mountain.

Reagan was the first politician I would ever despise when, in the run-up to the 1984 presidential election, I heard my normally sweet, innocent mother refer to him as 'that scary asshole.' Not knowing what those words meant, I used them in second grade the next day when our teacher asked us, one-by-one, whether we would vote for Reagan or Mondale if we had the choice. I received a sound slap on the wrist, though I didn't understand why.

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