Word: anti-communist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that their barbarities have been directed against civilians. Conservatives should pay greater heed to centuries-old prohibitions against the terrorizing of civilians during war. To regard this sacrifice of civilians as a necessary and legitimate step in pursuit of a geo-political goal is to ignore the warning of anti-communist philosopher Karl Popper: although one has the right to sacrifice oneself for a cause in which one believes, no one has the right to sacrifice another...
...next 20 years, the nation was governed by its first President, the mercurial, left-leaning Sukarno. After a bloody, abortive Communist coup in 1965, Sukarno's power waned, and he was eased out of office two years later by Suharto, an army general. The conservative, strongly anti-Communist Suharto earned a reputation as "the father of development," resurrecting a faltering economy with the aid of the 1970s oil boom. The son of a farmer, Suharto helped increase agricultural production, finally enabling the nation to become self-sufficient in rice...
...however, is artificial. The Carter Administration tried for a while to put idealism first, by cutting aid to repressive regimes, but soon had to make exceptions for countries strategically necessary to the U.S. Conversely, the Reagan Administration came in with a policy of more or less indiscriminate support for anti-Communist regimes but soon learned that anti- Communist militancy and rhetoric were not enough by themselves to make a country a reliable U.S. ally...
...American penchant for going it alone is also apparent in two more general commitments of the Administration: the so-called Reagan Doctrine of support for anti-Communist guerrilla movements and the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars...
When Reagan refers to Nicaragua as "a second Cuba," he unknowingly highlights his own acceptance of one such regime. He surely has no plans to topple "the first Cuba." Nicaragua is just an easier target on which he can vent his anti-communist spleen. And, of course, if Nicaragua were half the threat to American security that Reagan makes it out to be, his failure to intervence there long ago would be grounds for impeachment...