Where Ronnie Goes ..?

Over the last few days I have found myself very much at odds with the apparent majority of Americans. One person in particular was bemoaning the death of 'the Great Communicator'. When I reminded him that, as a direct result of Reagan's funding of the Contras in Nicaragua, the death squads in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and the apartheid regime in South Africa at least two hundred and fifty thousand civilians had been murdered in terrorist attacks by and against governments around the poorer parts of the world he told me that I have 'no proof of these things'.
Have we really become a nation of the holocaust-denier-style revisionists just because the illiberal corporate media tells us to be so? Have we conveniently forgotten Grenada and Tripoli?
Even if America is going to be utterly selfish and behave like fundamentalist religious extremists saying that they don't care about the deaths of foreigners, has it slipped our minds that Reagan began the redistribution of wealth from poor to rich so beloved of today's administration and that as a result the American worker now has lower real wages than 25 years age and works 160 hours a year longer than when Reagan came to office?
Have we even forgotten that by 1992 Reagan was the most unpopular living ex-president, ranking right alongside Nixon, far below Carter or even Ford?
Revisionism is a dangerous game. Sure, pay your respects if you want to but for millions around the world the funeral of Reagan will be the moral equivalent of a state funeral for Osama bin Laden. For those millions either dead themselves or who have lost relatives to the policies of Ronald 'I am a Contra' Reagan the only regret is that he didn't die twenty five years earlier.

Phil Rose Esq


 

A snippet of family correspondence from the USA

Whatever I think of Reagan- and there is much I shake my head at, by all accounts he was a very genuine person - very likeable. Even his enemies seemed to agree on that. And he likely contributed to bringing down the Berlin Wall. I do have some respect for the man.

Barbara

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He also enabled the running of cocaine into the US and funded the Contras in their massacres and other terrorist attacks on the people and democratically elected government of Nicaragua. And invaded Grenada. And ripped the solar panels off the roof of the Whitehouse on his first day in office because the oil companies told him to. And, when asked what his plans were for dealing with AIDS (at the time considered only to kill members of the gay community) said he ‘wasn’t really very interested’.

Being ‘genuine’ and ‘likeable’ is all well and good. I believe Hitler was a great entertainer. I just make it a habit not to support people who kill people by their own hands or by proxy and I fear America is way too caught up in the superficial handsome smiles of its leaders. I believe Bush is quite fun too. I think that ten or fifteen years after the fact people often say ‘ahh, he wasn’t so bad.’ Well, I remember those years (as I’m sure you do) and I have read a lot about him and I have to say he was that bad and appearing to be a kindly old grandfather and telling tales to amuse whilst ripping out environmental policies and undermining any and every socialist state (I mean evil empire) he could get his hands on just to make sure it failed just doesn’t do it for me. I am waiting for the state funerals for the Nicaraguan dead caused by Reagan.

Phil Rose Esq

Ronald Reagan

If only the bloody thug had died 20 years earlier

By CHRIS HARMAN

THE WORLD'S leaders have been effusive in their praise for Ronald Reagan, the former US president who died on Saturday. "He will be great missed by many friends and admirers on this side of the Atlantic," said Tony Blair.

France's Jacques Chirac said he was "sadly moved" by Reagan's death. The German president, Johannes Rau, called him a "faithful friend and ally of Germany". And George W Bush spoke of "a world he helped to save". But Reagan will be remembered in a very different way by hundreds of millions of people across the globe.

He was a killer who was prepared to commit any crime in the interests of increasing the power which the rich of the world-and of the US in particular-exercised over the world's poor.

He became president in January 1981, when US imperialism was on the defensive. This was just six years after the US defeat in Vietnam and two years after the revolutionary overthrow of two of its client dictatorships, of the Shah in Iran and of Somoza in Nicaragua.

Reagan's central aim was to restore US power, regardless of the cost in terms of human life. Saddam Hussein's Iraq had invaded Iran, late in 1980. Reagan sent Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad to provide support for Iraq even after it had used poison gas against Kurdish rebels.

In a further attempt to strengthen the US's position in the Middle East, he backed the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. That cost tens of thousands of lives and culminated in the slaughter of Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla. The next year US warships provided cover for the Israeli withdrawal from Beirut by bombarding the city.

Reagan turned Central America into a killing field. The CIA created a terrorist army, the Contras, to fight against the revolutionary government in Nicaragua. Tens of thousands suffered as it set out to murder government supporters and to destroy the economy-and was helped by US agents planting bombs in the country's harbours.

In the neighbouring states of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras the US financed death squads. These killed 40,000 people in El Salvador in just one year. Reagan's man in Honduras in these years was John Negroponte-who takes over as US overlord in Iraq at the end of this month.

In southern Africa, Reagan backed the apartheid regime in South Africa as it wreaked havoc in the border states of Mozambique and Angola. Under Reagan US troops invaded the small Caribbean state of Grenada and US jets bombed the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

A central part of restoring US dominance for Reagan was breaking the influence of the rival superpower, the USSR. He pushed through massive increases in US arms expenditure and deployed a new generation of weapons of mass destruction-cruise missiles with nuclear warheads-in Europe.

His generals spoke of preparedness for a limited nuclear "theatre" war. The aim was to cause a massively expensive arms race which would virtually bankrupt the USSR. Reagan's supporters claim he "liberated" the people of the former Eastern Bloc in this way. In fact, they were already liberating themselves without any help from the US long before Reagan came on the scene, with the popular insurgency in East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Poland in 1980. Reagan's approach ensured their countries went into desperate economic crises, from which tens of millions of people still suffer 20 years later.

Nowhere was the horror of the US form of "liberation" more clearly shown than in Afghanistan. There a popular rebellion was slowly wearing down a Russian occupation when Reagan took office. His government set out to take over this rebellion so as to make sure it served US interests.

It poured in supplies of cash and modern weaponry to its friends for them to use against their rivals as well as against the Russians. One of those friends, Hekmatyar, used these weapons to wreak havoc on the capital, Kabul, long after the Russians had left. Another was a certain Osama Bin Laden.

George W Bush says Reagan "restored" the American "nation". But only a small minority of the American people gained any benefit from Reagan's policies. Early in his presidency he broke a strike of the air traffic controllers' union Patco, sacked all its members and dealt a devastating blow to the trade union movement.

He began massive redistribution of wealth from of working people to the rich which continues to this day. As a result the average worker in the US has lower real wages than 25 years ago and works 160 hours a year (a whole month) longer than when Reagan came to office.

It is for all this that Blair, Bush, Chirac and the others are praising Reagan. However, the only regret for hundreds of millions of people across the world is that he did not die two decades earlier.