November 26, 2009

Ronald Reagan’s Thanksgiving Day Address, 1985

The Editors

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One part of Reagan's legacy that most Americans know nothing about was his personal and political support of the military dictatorship in anti-Communist Guatemala in the early 1980's. During that time, between 82-83, the military dictators, including Efrain Rios Montt, oversaw the killing of an estimated 200,000 Mayan Indians and other Guatemalans, slaughtering whole villages, including women and children.

This is the larges genocide in the Western Hemisphere since at least the 1950's, and this is what Ronald Reagan had to say about Rios Montt on December 4, 1982:
"President Rios Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment. ... I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice."

At this very time Rios Montt was continuing a policy of genocide against Guatemalan citizens that previously ruling generals had started.

The Reagan administration ignored the fact that neither freedom or democracy is supported by the Guatemalan regime, but because it is anti-Communist, Reagan gives the regime millions for weapons that it will use against its own people.
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/19/world/around-the-world-us-clears-military-vehicles-for-export-to-guatemala.html

Even the Conservapedia - a version of Wikipedia made for people who only want to hear the Republican perspective on things - called Rios Montt a dictator.
http://www.conservapedia.com/Efra%C3%ADn_R%C3%ADos_Montt

Now, by the time you read this post, some conservative idealogue may have gone and changed Conservapedia's entry on Rios Montt to seem more favorable, but at least for now, it concurs with the fact that Rios Montt was a bloody dictator, every bit as bad as Saddam, who, by the way, Reagan also supported when he sent Rumsfeld to Iraq as Special Envoy to the Middle East. On that trip, Rumsfeld, on behalf of President Reagan, offered Saddam money and logistical support (in the form of satellite imagery) to Saddam in his war against Iran.

I would encourage anyone who reads this post to research the Guatemalan atrocities of 1982-1983 for themselves. Very few Americans, liberal or conservative, know anything about them. Know if the NYT and ABC news knew that these atrocities were occuring, why didn't these media outlets do a better job of publicizing them? The fact that this issue was so underreported provides evidence that goes against the theory that the American media was biased towards liberalism in the 1980's. So, so much for the idea that a liberal media was relentlessly criticizing Reagan.

Indeed, even though Reagan stood tall against the Soviet dictatorship, he supported unAmerican governments, such as the Rios Montt military dictatorship in Guatemala and Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq.

And I don't think that you can claim that allowing Rios Montt to murder hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans was a necessary part of the Cold War. In the Cold War, Reagan had a moral responsibility to be a good guy, and support freedom and democracy, not dictatorships, and he and his administration failed in that responsibility in Guatemala.

The lesson that we should learn for today is that we cannot trust our leaders when they claim to be fighting a just war or supporting what they claim to be a just regime. We have to find out for ourselves if the war or the regime is just or not, and if it is not, we must withdraw support from that leader. We should have done this with George Bush before he attacked Iraq, but we failed as a nation to stop ourselves from waging a war that was not only unjust, but also bad for American interests since, by toppling the Sunni Saddam Hussein, we put the Shia majority of Iraq into power and the long term tendency of Shia muslims will be to ally with the leader of Shia Islam, Iran. In other words, the long-term result of Bush's war against Iraq was to hand Iraq to the Ayatollah's in Iran that Reagan fought against.

The only way we can stop Iraq from allying with Iran, since that's what the largest plurality , if not a majority, of Iraqis want to do, is to permanently subvert their democracy via CIA plots and our military bases.

In closing, I respected Reagan as a man, but when I discovered that he supported the leaders in Guatemala who committed one of the greatests genocides of the late 20th century, I was very disappointed in the Great COmmunicator and I am surprised that this fact is found in no mainstream American History book.



For more on the Guatemalan genocide, Rios Montt and Ronald Reagan, see:

http://www.massviolence.org/Guatemala-The-State-of-Research?cs=print

The Wikipedia entry on Rios Montt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rios_Montt

A Photo of Reagan with Rios Montt
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a81/kos102/2009/Rogues/reagan-montt.jpg&imgrefurl=http://forum.gainesville.com/viewtopic.php%3Ff%3D4%26t%3D766%26start%3D0&usg=__ZUCR0GdbBTWqC6NnkgnrGpx-Chw=&h=362&w=500&sz=48&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=6eur9lFHG4cJ3M:&tbnh=119&tbnw=159&ei=EDpETcKMIc6EswavsvjrDQ&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dreagan%2Brios%2Bmontt%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1049%26bih%3D529%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=727&oei=EDpETcKMIc6EswavsvjrDQ&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=17&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0&tx=90&ty=56

posted by: Hugh Kelly
Saturday, January 29, 2011 at 11:06 AM

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