Is Ollie North suggesting that soldiers not obey legal orders from a Democratic President?

Good golly, it's Ollie!

I mean, maybe ole Ollie learned the hard way about the dangers of carrying out illegal activities. But in this column, Obama Could Have Mentioned Iraqi Elections on Al-Arabiya Human Events 01/30/09 gripes about Obama's interview with an Arab TV station:

... he talked about “communicating a message to the Arab world and the Muslim world, that we are ready to initiate a new partnership based on mutual respect and mutual interest.” He also responded to his interlocutor in ways that denigrated his predecessors with phrases like, his desire “to listen, set aside some of the preconceptions that have existed and have built up over the last several years.”

During the interview Mr. Obama also spoke wistfully of the "respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago," and added, "there's no reason why we can’t restore that." ...

Unfortunately, the Al-Arabiya interview isn’t the only troubling talk coming from the Obama administration that could well leave members of our All Volunteer Force wondering just what is expected of them. In Congressional testimony this week, Defense Secretary Gates said that even though Afghanistan was the new Commander in Chief’s "top priority," we also "ought to keep our objectives realistic and limited in Afghanistan."

I have spent my life in and around our military. Everyone I’ve ever known in our Armed Forces believes in "realistic" missions and goals. But, I’ve yet to meet the man or woman in uniform who is willing to sacrifice all for "respect," a "partnership" or a "limited objective." [my emphasis]

Does that sound like he's encouraging "the troops" (who we all know the Republicans adore above everything else!) to do their duty to the best of their ability? Or to think again before they carry out orders on behalf of missions of which the Republicans don't approve? Just asking.

Christianist zealots like Ollie can't stand the idea of treating Muslim countries with "respect". Although how many times have Republicans told us that countries won't have respect for us, or that we'll lose our credibility, if we don't go along with their favorite military adventure of the moment?

Expecting consistency and clarity from the party headed by Rush "Mr. OxyContin" Limbaugh would just be too much. But, gosh, how can ole Ollie expect us to take stuff like the following seriously coming from him?

Let’s see, thirty years ago -- 1979 -- the year that Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran, the "Islamic Revolution" was proclaimed, the U.S. was first described as "the Great Satan," our embassy in Tehran was sacked and 53 Americans were held hostage for 444 days. That’s probably not the kind of “respect” Mr. Obama had in mind.

I know that Reps think they can reinvent their positions from day and day and even moment to moment. But this is the star of the Iran-Contra scandal saying this. That Islamic Revolutionary government - hey, Ollie, that would be the one you were supplying with weapons. And whose money you were taking to finance your little war in Nicaragua. Supplying them with weapons despite a US embargo on doing so because, uh, we were backing Iraq in the war they were having with Iran! The US even became an active belligerent on Iraq's side against Iran for a time. But Ollie is shocked, shocked that Obama isn't still outraged by the three-decades old revolution in Iran whose government Ollie went to such lengths to help.

These Republicans like Ollie are a strange lot.

Tags: obama administration, oliver north, republican party

The Iran-Contra affair

More blogging on The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad since 1750 (1989) by Walter LaFeber. This is his summary of the Iran-Contra affair during the Reagan-Bush administration. I think the Iran-Contra affair is pretty much a template for the entire foreign policy of the Cheney-Bush administration:

During the summer of 1987, joint Senate and House special committees conducted nationally televised hearings on the schemes. As they organized, a special commission headed by former Texas Republican senator John Tower, which Reagan had asked to investigate the role of the White House in the Iran-Contra affair, made its report. The Tower commission concluded that the NSC staff was responsible for the chaotic policy and that the president was out of touch with the foreign policies of his own White House. The House-Senate investigation confirmed much of the Tower commission's report. North testified that he had largely worked under Casey's direction, but he had also kept the new NSC director, Admiral John Poindexter, informed of the plan. Poindexter testified that he never told the president about the diversion plan. Casey never testified at all. He had died of a brain tumor months earlier and took to the grave whatever he had told his close friend Ronald Reagan about the plan.

North became a hero to much of the television audience for his defense of the Reagan Doctrine, even if the defense meant breaking the law. His attractiveness wore off, however, as second thoughts appeared. North, after all, admitted that he destroyed government documents that might have contained damning evidence. He also admitted that he had made statements to Congress that were "false," "evasive and wrong." The Army Times condemned North for having "paraded a travesty of military values before a credulous national television audience." Retired Colonel Harry Summers damned North and the others for selling weapons to Iran that might well be used against U.S. soldiers, and for itarting down the "slippery slope" by placing their wishes above those of Congress or the president - "for at the bottom of that slope is military dictatorship" in the United States. (my emphasis)

The enthusiasm for North at the time in the Republican Party is a sign of the authoritarian streak among much of the Party base. It also worth noting that Harry Summers is one of the most important advocates of the stab-in-the-back theory of the US loss in the Vietnam War. So it's not like he's "anti-military", even in the goofy, ideological sense conservatives often use the term.

Another aspect worth noticing in particular is that LaFeber describes North's supposed popularity among the public wearing off very quickly. Eric Alterman has pointed out that the mainstream media at the time tended to talk about North's great popularity among the public, even though he wasn't terribly popular with the general public.

And speaking of Eric Alterman, he wrote last year about now-Defence Secretary Robert Gates and the Iran-Contra affair in Contra Gates American Prospect Online 11/08/06.

Tags: iran-contra, oliver north

Will the Iran-Contra crowd ever go away?

John Poindexter, Bud McFarlane, Eliot Abrams, Michael Ledeen - all these names of key figures in the Iran-Contra affair keep popping up in connection with the Bush Administration's military adventures and intelligence programs.

Now here's another one. Manucher Ghorbanifar, one of the key scamsters that suckered Ollie North and his team of hot-shot amateur spy-diplomats back during the Reagan Administration, figures in yet another dispute between Rummy and the CIA (my emphasis):

The drama's central figure is Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer based in Paris who was involved in the Iran-Contra affair during the Reagan administration.

At that time, the CIA gave him two lie detector tests, which he failed. In 1984 and 1985 the CIA issued two "burn notices", warning all members of the US government not to go anywhere near him.

That did not stop two Pentagon officials from meeting Mr Ghorbanifar in December 2001 in Paris and January 2002 in Rome, lured by his promises to build bridges to influential Iranians who were interested in bringing down the Tehran theocracy.

The meetings took place in secrecy, intelligence sources say, and the CIA director, George Tenet, and the secretary of state, Colin Powell, only found about them when the Rome meeting was reported by the US ambassador to Italy.

Nevertheless, according to one source, the meetings continued until they were leaked to the press this summer and the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, ordered a halt.

But Mr Ghorbanifar maintained lines of communication with the neoconservative thinktank, the American Enterprise Institute, and in particular a friend from the Reagan days, Michael Ledeen, and through him passed on an extraordinary story.

The CIA wound up following up on one of Ghorbanifar's bogus tips and nothing came of it. They made a point of saying afterward that Ghorbanifar "a fabricator who has peddled false information for financial gain".

This can't be good. It just can't be good. We've been here before. Been there, done that. It didn't work out at all.

Tags: bud mcfarlane, eliot abrams, iran-contra affair, john poindexter, nanucher ghorbanifar, michael ledeen, oliver north