No prob, I figured that it was an honest mistake, as no one who holds the kinds of opinions that you've expressed here who's lived in Central America could possibly view the Contras as the good guys. People who get their support from thugs like Ollie North cannot be, by definition, good guys.

And yes, being from the mideast myself and having spent some time in Europe, travelling and staying with friends, it never ceases to amaze me how uncivilized so many Americans can be. Not so much by being overtly rude, as by being tense, rushed and out of tune with the tempo of everyday life. De Tocqueville remarked upon it 160 years ago so clearly it's not a new thing or technology-based. This is one of the reasons that I'm not really that bothered by the so-called "alien invasion" from down south. Once the recent arrivals get integrated into US society--and they will--it's hopefully going to improve, diversify and "mellow out" the US.

Insh'Allah.

Very good on your part. After I clicked the post button I realized I meant to say the Sandanistas. Then I even checked to make sure on Wikipedia. Alas, it wasn't my first error. I figured that I wouldn't get caught and would let it pass rather than post another comment, saying regrettably, that I made an error.

You know, after living in Central America, I found that most of the people I met were remarkably civil. On a day to day basis they laughed a lot, were enthusiastically friendly, helpful, etc. Quite different from living in the states where everyone appears to be the "rat race." Everyone, it seems, has an attitude of "screw you, man."

The Middle East was also very pleasant to live in, with hardly any crime, and people very polite. It boggles my mind that the Arabs that I happened to be friends with, would ever be terrorists. They always appeared to be so "laid-back" without a care in the world. Allah would take care of everything! "Inshallah!"

Since so many people have commented on my, Glenn's and others' remarks about being "patient", I will response generically here about why I meant by "patience". I speak for myself only, but I'm guessing that this is what Glenn and others meant.

By needing to be "patient", I did NOT mean passively sitting around and meekly waiting for the "system" to magically correct itself. Anyone who thinks that this is what I meant or wrote needs to show me where I wrote this. What I DID mean, and thought that I was quite clear about, is that we should be "patient" in an active way.

I.e., we should absolutely do all that we can, individually and collectively, be it by blogging, writing articles and books, making speeches, contacting members of congress, writing LTE's, attending rallies and protests, educating ourselves about what's going on, etc. And we should absolutely be all over Dems (and even Repubs) to stand up and fight and do the right thing instead of keep caving into Bush and the GOP. Basically, we should do everything possible to stand up to BushCo and reverse and undo all the damage that they've done and continue to do or seek to do to our republic. But at the end of the day, there is literally only so much that we can do at any given time, and only so fast that things are able to move in the right direction. And in THAT sense--and that sense only--we need to be patient.

Thus the metaphor of turning a massive ship around. I was NOT calling for us to wait for this ship to turn around on its own. That's nonsense. I meant that we should do all that we can to turn this ship around, but realize that at best it's going to be slow in being turned around, and be patient as it hopefully does so. And if our efforts prove to be inadequate, we should rethink our approach and try other approaches, and be patient about them. But to expect the ship to turn around faster than it's capable of turning around under even the most ideal of conditions (which hardly apply these days with weak Dems barely if at all controlling congress, a meek, lazy and dishonest media, apathetic and disengaged public, etc.) is, I think, foolish, pointless, and counterproductive. And to claim that because it hasn't turned around by now is similarly, I think, foolish, pointless, and counterproductive.

And yet I keep reading people make comments that basically comes across as "I don't CARE! I want my country back and I want it NOW!". Well, fine, so do all of us. But this is simply, literally, practically not possible, and to expect it to happen anyway and be motivated by the frustration that this leads to is, I think--yup, you guessed it--foolish, pointless, and counterproductive. There is this infuriating, stupid and unhelpful (and perhaps openly hurtful) infantile strain on the left that demands and expects instant relief NOW, that seems to expend all its efforts in either trying to achieve instant relief NOW, or expecting instant relief NOW, or complaining that we don't have instant relief NOW. To such people I would say, yes we all want instant relief NOW, but it just doesn't work that way, so just grow the fuck up, stop getting in the way with all this infantile whining, and do something that might ACTUALLY lead to EVENTUAL relief of the sort that is PRACTICALLY possible. And yes, they need to be PATIENT, too--in the way that I described, i.e. ACTIVELy patient.

I hope this helps. If not, sorry, this is the best that I can do, and if you still disagree with me, then we have views of reality that are so irreconcilable that it's just not worth trying to reconcile them.

After I retired, I lived in Costa Rica for 6 years and explored the Central American countries. To read the American press about the Contras, et al they are mean and cruel and blood-thirsty. Nothing could be further from the truth. I visited a village named San Diego, on Lake Atitlin in Guatemala. The Government army, under the direction of the CIA, came down on the village to persecute the poor Mayan Indians, who had no idea what was going on. They killed 10,000 of the clueless Mayans, trying to find the Che Guevera type guerrillas in the mountains. To this day, no one knows that there were any guerrillas in the mountains. The are memorials and crude statutes where the slaughter of the innocents took place.

I assume that you were either being ironic about the Contras, or meant the Sandinistas and other leftist types, because, of course, it was the Contras who were behind the vast majority of anti-civilian murder in the 80's, backed by Mr. Casey's CIA. I studied this region and this era a bit in some history classes I took in the 80's under one of the world's experts on the history of US involvement in Latin America. Not a very proud history, for the US or CIA.

And until we finally rid our government of those elements within it who always seem to have been around who seem to think that the best if not only way to deal with the rest of the world is to kill it, we will continue to miserably fail to live up to our lofty ideals and deserve to be roundly condemned for it. This is not "hating" America, but rather hating un-American Americans who keep doing and supporting this sort of thing. Not that you're calling people who oppose this policy un-American, but so many on the right do, and get away with it, and they have to be called out as the actually un-American scum that they are.

Neoconservatism is merely the latest incarnation of this odious "American" tradition. Until it is either destroyed, or effectively nullified, we will not deserve to be called a "moral beacon". This applies, of course, to all countries, as we're not unique in our nastiness towards others (and our own, of course). But if you're going to call yourself morally superior (as neocons always do), you need to actually BE morally superior--or simply acceptable. And we're FAR from that right now.

The right calls this America bashing. I call it calling out their bullshit in the hopes that we might someday actually be that which we hypocritically claim to be, but all too often are not. And yeah, I know about the Marshall plan, international humanitarian aid, our many interventions to stop genocide and strife, etc., and we are to be commended for this. We are not "evil". We simply do "evil", sometimes--when we are led by evil people. And all the good that we do does not justify or clean away all the evil.

And perhaps the most infuriating thing is that we seem to be strongest when we're being good (not suckers, but good), and weakest when we're being evil. It is a testament to the underlying stupidity and psychosis of folks like Cheney that they just don't or won't get that. Something deep in their character simply does not allow them to adopt such policies, even though they clearly work. They're just psychologically incapable of doing this. I mean, what kind of people effectively order the murder of massive numbers of innocents for no good reason other than massively insecure morons, sociopaths and psychotics? It's unreal.

Anyway, yeah, we agree on this, and you've clearly seen this for yourself. Not a pretty picture.