1989: End or Beginning?

Financial Times: "Victory in the Cold War was a Start as well as an Ending."

Anniversaries are a good time for taking stock. The collapse of Soviet communism was a glorious moment. It remains so, despite mistakes and disappointments along the way. But today’s crisis tells us of the failings of a euphoric capitalism. Capitalism will not now perish, as communism did. But the signal ability of liberal democracy is to learn and adapt. We learnt from the 1930s. We must now learn the lessons of the 2000s.

Good assignment for the final WC week, when matched to other thoughts about periodization.

Bush's pet terrorist

From Digby:

Luis Posada Carriles, an admitted terrorist wanted for crimes in Latin America, had a nice dinner the other night.

...the man being honored by 500 fellow Cuban Americans at a sold-out gala was Luis Posada Carriles, the former CIA operative wanted in Venezuela on terrorism charges and under a deportation order for illegally entering the United States three years ago [...]

Venezuela's ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, condemned the celebration of Posada as a mockery of justice and evidence of a Bush administration double standard in fighting terrorism.

...

Analysts speculate that the U.S. government has dodged calls for prosecution of Posada for fear he would disclose details of CIA involvement in coups, assassination plots and scandals, including the Iran-Contra Affair.

Peter Kornbluh, head of the Cuba Documentation Project at George Washington University's National Security Archive, has compiled declassified CIA and FBI documents on Posada that show he remained in close touch with Washington handlers throughout his covert service.

"The spectacle of a wanted international terrorist being publicly feted as a hero in Miami makes a mockery of the Bush administration's commitment to wage a war on terrorism," he said of Posada's coming-out party.

More from Digby on Justice Department's almost purposeful incompotence in managing his hearings.

Useful for 20th century CIA ops part of course.

history of neocons

Sadly, No! is such a great site because not only do they consistently bring teh funny, but also teh knowledge. Today, HTML Mencken came across an old interview with Hitchens ("For the Sake of Argument"), in which he admits the evil of the neocons he later joined.

HITCHENS: Do you remember what it was like? Don’t you remember what a hooligan atmosphere there was in American intellectual life for a long time because of the Cold War? Anyone who had any doubts that this war was worth fighting and worth the risk of a nuclear exchange was accused of being a dupe or a secret sympathizer or a fan of Neville Chamberlain’s umbrella or all these other things. People were constantly being crushed and coerced and derided and driven out of the argument. I wanted to put that down before people forget it.

And of course, not only did people forget, they happily allowed the same f---in people to do the same f---in thing all over again. The Sadly story documents how they went in search of a new enemy after the Cold War, even going to far as to encourage Taiwan to declare its independence so that China would attack them and we could have a new conflict. Lovely.

Fukuyama:

I think that for some neoconservatives… In a sense, they wanted to have an enemy. The end of the Cold War was a tough time because they didn’t know who the enemy ought to be. I think in the case of Bill Kristol and The Weekly Standard there was actually a deliberate search for an enemy because I think that they felt that the Republican Party didn’t do as well if foreign policy wasn’t a big issue.

The late 1990s was the, you know, the period of the stock market bubble and Monica Lewinsky and they didn’t really have an issue in all of that, I thought, that they thought was particularly important or had much traction with the voters and with the public. I think they initially picked on China as their target — and I always thought right from the beginning that was a big mistake because, first of all, foreign policy shouldn’t be driven by the needs of the Republican Party...

Too right.

homo commie faggot not so faggoty after all

Their defection to the Soviets was explained by their homosexuality. But newly released info shows that they weren't gay after all. This story from Seattle Weekly ("The Worst Scandal in NSA History Was Blamed on Cold War Defectors' Homosexuality," July 18 2007) reveals the new background and gives a very interesting biography of the pair. The closing line is classic:

Ultimately, the queerest things about Martin and Mitchell were their political, not sexual, acts. "Were they living today," quips author Bamford, "[they] would probably defect all over again."

Assign this!

Perfect new book for the second semester: "The Global Cold War". Table of Contents:

Introduction
1. The empire of liberty: American ideology and foreign interventions
2. The empire of justice: Soviet ideology and foreign interventions
3. The revolutionaries: anti-colonial politics and transformations
4. Creating the Third World: the United States confronts revolution
5. The Cuban and Vietnamese challenges
6. The crisis of decolonization: Southern Africa
7. The prospects of socialism: Ethiopia and the Horn
8. The Islamist defiance
9. The 1980s: the Reagan offensive
10. The Gorbachev withdrawal and the end of the Cold War
Conclusion: Revolutions, interventions and Great Power collapse.

"they should see Reagan"

From Hilzoy, again, on the Republicans' first debate:

"Giuliani said the only thing worse than an American-led military offensive against Iran would be Iran having nuclear weapons, which he called "the worst nightmare'' of the Cold War. The way to stop Iran, he said, was resolute American leadership facing down the Iranian president.

"He has to look at an American president, and he has to see Ronald Reagan,'' Giuliani said."

1. And here I thought the worst nightmare of the cold war was mutually assured destruction.
2. Hilzoy goes through Reagan's inconsistent and incomprehensible anti-terrorism and anti-Iran policies:

Maybe, instead, Giuliani thinks that when the Iranians see a US President, they should see the Ronald Reagan whose administration failed to respond at all when terrorists bombed our embassies in Beirut and Kuwait, and who did not fire his Secretary of Defense when he countermanded the President's order to strike terrorist training facilities after 241 of our troops anjd 64 other people were killed. Or perhaps he has in mind instead the Reagan who, when the marine barracks were bombed, swore that we would stay in Lebanon and then, four months later, began pulling our troops out.

That's not even the whole thing! But the Reagan myth has taken hold. The general public doesn't like it questioned because it seems like a mean attack on a nice man. The Republicans don't like it questioned because they cling to a childlike faith in Big Daddy, and Reagan is the most recent one they have to feel good about. That, and they tend not to care about logical consistency.