To go to the Contra side of Iran-Contra, people on the left who oppose the war quote your old boss, Ronald Reagan, saying, "One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist," and he was talking about your friends the contras. That proves to a lot of people that the U.S. has always had a double standard on terror. We interviewed Noam Chomsky recently and he talked about how the U.S. backing of the Contras, and the terror in Nicaragua, undermined our ability to claim to be opponents of terrorism. Weren't the Contras terrorists, according to the prevailing definition? How do you defend your backing of them today?
The Contras never had a policy of attacking civilians. I don't care what anybody says. I helped write some of their stuff, as bad as my Spanish is, and it was a joke within the Contras. They used to joke about the gringo who couldn't speak Spanish because I learned it at the Naval Academy. The fact is the Contras never had a policy of attacking civilians. Now, did civilian atrocities occur? Certainly they did. They always occur in war. Civilians get hurt in every war; that's one of the reasons that those of us who've been to war never want to see another one.
The reality of it is, and I don't think the left has ever really understood this, Joan, I used to listen to [Contra commander] Enrique Bermudez and his orders to his commanders in the base camps on the Honduran border. In every case, he told them, "The civilians are the sea in which we swim. If you hurt them, they will turn you in. We must recruit from them. And you cannot recruit by being brutal." That was not the Sandinista philosophy at all. Poor old Enrique Bermudez gets murdered when he goes back to Nicaragua, and there was no investigation of his murder; it was simply allowed to happen. Meanwhile, (Sandinista leaders) Tomas Borge and Daniel Ortega, who locked up people who died in dungeons, are still walking the streets. Ortega, a pedophile and everybody knows it [Ortega was accused of abusing his stepdaughter], is still walking the streets. Daniel Ortega does not feel like he's under threat from anybody in the government. That's the difference.
But former Contra leader Edgar Chamorro was widely quoted as saying in reality a lot of units did brutalize civilians.
Well, sure. But the difference is, I mean this is where Chomsky can't get it: The policy of an organization like al-Qaida is to do nothing but target civilians. If you can also kill soldiers, it's just fine. A freedom fighter doesn't do that. A freedom fighter just wouldn't do that. Now, there were exceptions. But I watched court-martials after which the perpetrators of crimes within the Nicaraguan resistance were executed.
You watched Contra court-martials?
Yes, and there were executions of commanders who committed atrocities. Look, in any civil war, terrible things occur. I live in Virginia, where we still call it "the recent war of Northern aggression." What I'm suggesting to you is that people like Chomsky still can't abide the fact that his pal Daniel Ortega was voted out of office.
Democracy ultimately worked in Nicaragua.
But it never would have happened without the Nicaraguan resistance.
You don't know that. And you're not really going to compare the U.S. Civil War to end slavery to the Contra war, are you?
The atrocities that occurred in the Civil War in this country, as in any civil war, were awful. Look, the North won the war. But ask anybody on that Sherman Memorial Highway between Savannah and Atlanta what he did, and they'll tell you. They still talk about it.
Let's move on to a somewhat lighter issue: What was the real story with your friend Geraldo Rivera, and your attempts to intervene with the military on his behalf?
The media made way too much of the whole thing. As I assured Roger Ailes [Chairman and CEO of Fox News], I'm on his team. Just like an NFL team, there are a lot of personalities. I think we've got a winning team, and I'm not about to sack my own quarterback or knock another teammate. I did not talk to anybody about Geraldo. I did not talk to any New York [Daily] News reporter, and I think that's where the story got started about Geraldo. I was up north [in Afghanistan], he was doing his reporting down south; I think we did a good job. He's now in Somalia, where he thinks the next war's going to be.
Where do you think it's going to be?
My gut would tell me more likely the Philippines. It's not a Muslim Country; it's a Catholic country with a Muslim minority that wants our help. We don't have the logistics problems; the Navy has the run of the seas.
And your best guess about Osama's whereabouts?
KIA. All the best guys I talked to out there are convinced of it.
Do you worry that the Bush administration can't declare victory if it can't prove he's dead?
Well, I asked a bunch of the youngsters out there, "What's your definition of victory?" And one of them said, "I'll tell you what victory is, Colonel: It's six months without reading about terrorism on the front page of an American newspaper." And that's a perfect answer.
About the writer
Joan Walsh is the editor of Salon News.
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