Word: guerrilla
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Other foreign policy problems are crowding in, and will be exacerbated by the fallout from the Tower commission report. The most immediate and, for Reagan, disastrous effect may be the collapse of the contra campaign. The contras are central to the so-called Reagan doctrine of helping rebels wage guerrilla war against Marxist governments in widely scattered areas of the globe: Afghanistan, Angola, Kampuchea. But the contras cannot carry on their rebellion without continued U.S. assistance. The Tower report shows the extent to which North, Poindexter and the CIA went, in circumventing the law, to slip arms to them during...
Former Colorado Senator Gary Hart is now very much alone as the Democratic front runner, and that is not a position he particularly relishes. He knows firsthand the vulnerabilities that come from such exposure: in 1984 he conducted a guerrilla campaign that nearly toppled Walter Mondale, who had been considered virtually invincible...
...cannot win. Perhaps. But it is equally possible that the lack of success has to do with two years of a grossly unbalanced arms race between the contras and the Sandinistas. Such imbalances are not rectified overnight, nor do they lend themselves to military spectaculars by the disarmed party. Guerrilla war requires arms, training and, above all, time for building an infrastructure in the countryside. The Sandinistas were in the field for 17 years before their victory over Somoza...
...said, if the contras do not have "some kind of success" soon, they will likely forfeit American support. The contras' greatest weakness could be the nature of their great-power patron. It could be that the U.S. does not have the patience to support the incremental struggle that is guerrilla war. And the contras certainly cannot win without outside support. Very few guerrilla armies do. Not even the Viet Cong...
...Guerrilla war is always morally problematic, and it is therefore important for the U.S. to ensure that its allies conduct the war as humanely as any guerrilla war can be conducted. But is it wrong to support a resistance seeking to overthrow the rule of the comandantes? Americans value freedom in their own country. They would not tolerate the political conditions that Nicaraguans must suffer. There is no hope that Nicaraguans will enjoy anything near the liberty that Americans enjoy (and that the Nicaraguans were promised by the Sandinistas) unless their new tyranny is removed. How, then, does it serve...