AHC: Pres. Reagan in dock for role in early '80s Guatemalan genocide some ten years later?

How does President Reagan making statements on Guatemalan President as well as the US government sales of weapons to Guatemala equate to President Reagan being complicit in genocide? . . .
I agree. It would depend on specific Iran-Contra type of details, only in this case pertinent to Guatemala.

PS I'm happy to help with research as above. And so far, it merely hints at what else might be there. However, my time is limited. If you or anyone else would like to jump in and help with the research, I would appreciate it. Thanks. :)
 
How does President Reagan making statements on Guatemalan President as well as the US government sales of weapons to Guatemala equate to President Reagan being complicit in genocide? If that is the level of proof, then President Carter for example would be charged for his continued support of the Shah of Iran, Philippine President Marcos, and of the Indonesian Government during his presidency. EDIT: Or President Ford's support of Indonesia and other authoritarian governments during his term.

The US government would not go down that slippery slope.
Yes indeed. US Presidents do very often give public support to leaders of regimes infamous in retrospect, and in fact if one looks at contemporary sources too, as purveyors of massive human rights violations, up to invading other nations (Indonesia in 1975, re East Timor). In fact if you go down the list of all countries listed as performing major rights violations, and strike out the Soviet bloc or other Communist ones, you'll find you have not cut the list in half, and then that the vast majority of those still on the list are in fact by any sensible definition of the term US clients. They receive substantial aid, most of it military; their police and military forces get training in the USA, and that training has even been revealed to include methods of interrogation we say are illegal in our own country. "Military aid" very often forms a channel of communication with officers who subsequently carry out coups, as in for instance Guatemala, or postpone stepping down from elected office, as in Marcos of the Philippines. The fact that a substantial portion of the operating budget of a poorer nation stems not from its own taxpayers but the generosity of Uncle Sam is rather suggestive of where the interests of the rulers governing lie, is it not?

So let's be very very clear here. Are you suggesting that we should not believe there is any connection between the authority and responsibility of the US Presidents and the murderous actions of these states so accustomed to American generosity and contact, unless we can produce a document signed by the current President with written instructions to kill X number of their citizens or track down and torture radical Y? We must back off and declare each of these Presidents in no way responsible, never mind that as Truman said, "the buck stops here?"

Or--are you merely pointing out it would be highly inexpedient to attempt to charge any sitting or retired President as the individual responsible for US participation in these actions, because we'd have to prepare a cell for every President we ever elect for their retirement upon completing their last term? We don't have to fight about whether any, or even all, or on the other side none, of these actions were justified by imperatives of national security--we can I think all agree that plenty of plain facts in public sight verify that the US government routinely, always is backing some regime that relies on domestic terrorization of its people somewhere, and that to change this would be to drastically change America's role in the world. Therefore no US President will allow his predecessors to be charged just for giving aid and comfort to some tyrant somewhere--they all do it and conventional wisdom says all must.

Perhaps a US government can make a distinction between a normal degree of sordidness in these matters and something really egregious. Suppose that for instance the President was personally complicit in a program aiming to eradicate all people with red hair, and for expedient reasons could only do it peripherally in the USA, but had the opportunity to assist some police state in say the Balkans in developing a pilot program. Since a lot of Americans also have red hair and it turns out some of the less well placed ones went missing or tragically and unexpectedly dead during President Z's term, and the whole mess in the Balkans gets revealed, and the President's partners in this project are revealed as a bunch of murderous lunatics whose theory about why red heads must die for the good of the nation cannot be stomached by anyone, left or right--it was all some crazy thing hardly anyone supports.

Now in that case, I think we'd try to make an exception, reasoning it has little to do with the nature of Presidential power but everything to do with extreme positions out of the norm for a President.

In short, here we rip off the mask of plausible deniability, face facts we normally blandly deflect, because in this case it is expedient.
And then we run into the problem that the President is constitutionally immune to criminal prosecution, certainly while doing their duties. It is an open question whether this applies to the actions of a prior President while they were president but I bet any court in the land will hold that it does. In order to prosecute a President for anything they did during their terms, you must first Impeach them in Congress and they must then be found guilty by the Senate in trial--and only then are they stripped of their special status.

It is also unclear whether it is possible to impeach a President who has finished their term at all; I hope so as a general principle because it seems essential that accountability for malfeasance should hold, but I would be glumly unamazed to learn that no, it is a Catch-22, consensus will hold former Presidents eternally immune. A whole lot of factors work that way unfortunately. And from a partisan point of view it may be just as well, in my opinion Presidents I have supported have been less bad than those I have opposed--of course, that's why I have been for or against different ones. Candidly, the ones I support do disappoint me, so I admit all are guilty. But given the way the political machinery has worked in my lifetime I believe the ones I oppose would be protected and the ones I support castigated unmercifully in a blatant double standard, so pragmatically it may be just as well that effective immunity protects all.

But in terms of abstract justice something is clearly wrong with a system that gives that level of immunity to its chief powers. How can we evaluate candidates in a democracy if we can't at least get the facts out for public scrutiny and political judgement? If we had that, then we could hold the person responsible but immune from punishment--their punishment is the verdict of history plus questions hovering on their associates and facilitators, who deservedly will share moral accountability-ie, we learn not to trust them with power in the future.

So anyway--

1) Presidents may not be brought "to dock" for their deeds in office without the impeachment process.

2) It would take a political revolution to hold a former President accountable in that way.

3) If we are going to take such extraordinary steps to prosecute Reagan in particular in 1994, it would be silly to start and stop with Guatemala's murder spree. There are plenty of other misdeeds to charge him that in some combination will either register as more monstrous crimes or alternatively will resonate more strongly with the American people as having been bad for them. It is deplorable, vile, that we don't morally care about the welfare of people overseas, but the President's sworn duty is to secure the general welfare of the USA, and so if he could be shown to have done the opposite in an egregious way that would have extra weight--aside from counting how many human souls anywhere on the planet he hurt, we could focus on the violation of sworn duty instead; let God judge him for the other stuff, we're gonna nail him on a technicality!

4) to set an example like this has one of two outcomes--a) we set ourselves on a track where behavior like this will no longer be the norm, and commit ourselves to weaknesses and one trusts, strengths, coming from this moral resolve-or b) a temporary abberation in the way our system works causes a reaction to reverse the judgement, vindicate the "victim," and probably in reaction eliminate what protections we currently have against arbitrary executive power.

5) it will hardly do to bring Reagan alone to account. The first thing one can read in the article on Guatemalan genocide is that clear human rights violations started decades earlier, in the mid sixties in fact, and continued decades more. All American Presidents in that time range are clearly complicit to some degree. Mind, one thing Reagan did was get Congress to rescind the particular sanction against Guatemala receiving aid. (But in fact nations on such lists have been known to get aid anyway, by means of laundering it through another country--Country I gets X billion dollars but is told under the table Country G is to get a specified amount of that. If anyone doubts this kind of thing happens, that was the whole central crime in Iran-Contra--discovering means whereby US funds were being laundered through third parties to wind up in hands Congress had specifically stated were not to be funded). Presumably someone previously put Guatemala on that forbidden list in the first place; depending on whether they realized Guatemala's criminal government (revolving door into the bargain) would get it anyway or not, they deserve some credit for trying. At any rate it made a moral statement and Congressmen, Senators and perhaps Presidents who were serious about it (I presume it was a Carter move, giving Congress information and urging them to do the right thing, but perhaps it was Ford--he didn't care about East Timor much but maybe, just maybe it was a moral decision he made--with Henry Kissenger his Secretary of state, his other actions, and George HW Bush his CIA chief I doubt it, but maybe I would be surprised. I'd think if Ford did it he'd know the money still would go to the anticommunist regime anyway and he would be making an empty gesture, but any it is pious to say we'd rather not support torturers and murderers. Better to actually not support them, but as conservatives say, "Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue").

Anyway it would take either a revolution or a kabuki theatre exercise in hypocrisy and formalism to charge Reagan with this in particular. It could be that this is one of 147 major charges, down the list by 80 or 90 or so, and he's already been found guilty of the higher ones on the list. Or that a bipartisan agreement has been reached to seriously pursue this one, and let it symbolically stand for all, by some negotiation process.

If the former we can be sure Carter too is facing a list (much shorter, even if we let the defenders of Reagan, Ford and Nixon bring in their whole retaliatory laundry list, but substantial, yes for stuff like supporting the Shah) and so are Ford and Nixon, all previous Presidents being now deceased.

If the latter, it is a political side show. I take the lives of 200,000 Guatemalan Mayans seriously, but the nation won't if this one thing out of so many others is pretended to be the only thing to charge him with.
 
Even if Reagan has (somehow) been indicted by the US for genocide without being pardoned, you’d still have a hell of a time legitimately getting a conviction. As far as I know, nothing Reagan ever did could be considered incitement of Genocide, which is the only thing you could charge him with as Reagan most certainly didn’t commit it. To get a conviction of incitement you’d need to prove he directly and publicly incited Guatemala’s government to commit genocide. I don’t think you could do that.
 
So let's be very very clear here. Are you suggesting that we should not believe there is any connection between the authority and responsibility of the US Presidents and the murderous actions of these states so accustomed to American generosity and contact, unless we can produce a document signed by the current President with written instructions to kill X number of their citizens or track down and torture radical Y? We must back off and declare each of these Presidents in no way responsible, never mind that as Truman said, "the buck stops here?"

You are mixing up political responsibility with criminal responsibility. What is being absurdly and ASBishly suggested here is that the latter might be attempted to be proven in court, so yes, a signed document or other comparable evidence would definitely be needed.

Note the order as you phrased it doesn't support an accusation of attempted genocide, anyway. Even "kill al those on this list of 349 persons" amounts to mass murder, not genocide. You'd need "kill all the members of X tribe, or at least as many as you can, and drive survivors away from their lands, and burn their villages".
 
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You are mixing up political responsibility with criminal responsibility. What is being absurdly and ASBishly suggested here is that the latter might be attempted to be proven in court, so yes, a signed document or other comparable evidence would definitely be needed.

Note the order as you phrased it doesn't support an accusation of attempted genocide, anyway. Even "kill al those on this list of 349 persons" amounts to mass murder, not genocide. You'd need "kill all the members of X tribe, or at least as many as you can, and drive survivors away from their lands, and burn their villages".

The thread OP chose a peculiar single instance to single out, true. "In the dock" need not refer to a strictly judicial process however. The purpose could be to simply document, as sworn and indisputable fact, that "plausibly deniable" events were in fact promoted and enabled, or even ordered outright, by the US government, not as an irresponsible aberration but by the intent of the Administration. If a President has ordered that a certain result be achieved and that people under their command will be covered because they were carrying out policy, then that fact should be confirmed and acknowledged; then in a democracy voters decide whether they want more or less of this kind of thing by electing people with a track record of doing it--or not. Immunity from strict judicial punishment might be vital to get the information out and verified so there is no more of this nonsense of "hey, your President didn't order it." The Catch-22 of "I was following the President's orders" and if necessary being pardoned by that or a future President, and then the President claiming they had no specific knowledge is short circuited by clarification, yes, the President, as chief executive and the point of contact between the voting public and self-appointing administrative structures voters do not have proper rights to interfere in directly, is where the buck stops. If they don't know people acting under their authority are breaking laws--they should. True ignorance on the Chief Executive's part is evidence of incompetence and failure to fulfill their sworn duty by either becoming competent--appointing effective and responsible subordinates and demanding proper feedback from them-or stepping down in favor of someone who can fulfill the duties. If we assume they are not treasonously irresponsible, they can and should be held accountable for what happens under them. If in fact someone was conducting a rogue operation without the approval of someone above them, then those above should have no objection to proper criminal prosecution of those rogue agents.

Now the specifics of Reagan's relationship with Montt were that in the long history of generic political terror in Guatemala, he personally escalated to the level that is properly called genocide. Going beyond identifying this or that individual, group or even village as being specifically involved in anti-government activities as they defined them (their broad and unaccountable, sweeping and final definition of that corresponds to a broader category of crimes against humanity, not specifically genocide as such in general), under Montt entire populations were identified as being inherently and essentially enemies of the order he sought to impose. Not only did he and others under him say this, they demonstrated it by conducting operations that simply killed them off--no trials, even after torture, no selectivity--just kill them all.

And it was this leader, whom Reagan personally met with, whose performance Reagan promoted as "doing a good job."

By including the track record of a leader who was in fact already committing genocide at the time in the category of "doing a good job" and worthy of being removed from a long-ago compiled list of actors outside the pale of accepted authority, he states, implicitly that what Montt was actually doing was within that pale, that US policy supports it and should do so directly, without the impediment of a "do not aid" list in Congressional funding. He was vouching for what the Guatemalan state was doing. And if he did so in ignorance of the full extent of what they did, he was being irresponsible. If he was ignorant because he did not want to be told, that was an irresponsible decision on his part. I believe he must have had some knowledge of what he was signing off on, and wanted it to happen under the impression it would weaken opposition to US policy by removing people whose interests were inherently opposed to it--people in the way. That's a classic case of genocide and he proposed the USA double down on supporting it, not rein it in.

So I've already said clearly judicial processes do not apply thanks to Presidential immunity, he would have to be impeached first. He might be before a regular bar, for specific crimes that do carry judicial penalties, having been impeached already, which voids executive immunity. He might be being tried as part of a massive, comprehensive campaign with all prior Presidents in the next three cells, they too having been impeached by the same standards. Or it might be selective, which brings into question the overall justice of the whole campaign.

Anyway to declare it ASB, you need to show no possible process can result in this in the real world. But revolution is a possibility. This could be a kangaroo court with the outcome fixed regardless of evidence, or standards that won't pass muster in our current system. I am not sure whether the sort of meticulous evidence you would expect is required for individual sentencing, as opposed to a fact-finding investigation, would exist or not, but a new administration, which might be in power due to an armed coup or by normal electoral processes, that insists on a clean break with the past might be able to lay hands on authentic evidence not currently available to the public.

Or frankly they might make it up. I say if they did that, it would not be contradiction of facts that are publicly known, which are that Reagan chose to advocate for clearing Guatemala's status as a human rights offender recognized as such by the US government, precisely at this time that a general rap sheet of many types of abuse escalated to include genocide.

It isn't the single battle I'd pick myself; I'd at least be including the case of Guatemala as a broader pattern repeatedly shown, and part of a still larger pattern that includes active and preferential support of greater human rights abusers over lesser ones merely on grounds of expediency into a general pattern of favoring a narrow class of citizens in the USA and people in the world in general and thus, by seeking to remove checks on power already conceded, broaden their power and make it predictably more abusive and one-sidedly favor their interests at the expense of the larger number of people. In the case of US citizens, it is harming the general welfare for the benefit of a few--if you like, reevaluating it to discount the many in favor of a highly valued welfare of the few.

Put that way it might well be shown that that has been the pattern of US and all governments. Even this does not preclude a new movement to rectify this, and showing them to be hypocrites and fools need not bear on the question of their getting the upper hand.
 
. . . As far as I know, nothing Reagan ever did could be considered incitement of Genocide, . . .
well, here's ABC News . .

Did Reagan Finance Genocide in Guatemala?
  • By SANTIAGO WILLS
May 14, 2013


http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/News/ronald-reagan-finance-genocide-guatemala/story?id=19179627

' . . . U.S. involvement in Guatemala during the 17 months of Ríos Montt's regime. . . '
Giving weapons to someone we know is committing genocide, well, that sounds like pretty active participation to me. The really interesting case might be if a Guatemalan citizen, say living in exile in Mexico, sued U.S. officials in U.S. for the murder of his or her family members.

PS This article makes at least one mistake by referring to the dictator following the 1954 coup as "Coronel."
 
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Did Reagan Finance Genocide in Guatemala?
  • By SANTIAGO WILLS
May 14, 2013


http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/News/ronald-reagan-finance-genocide-guatemala/story?id=19179627

' . . . Geoff Thale, Central America Program Director at the Washington Office for Latin America (WOLA). "Direct U.S. military aid was suspended during the Carter Administration, but then restored by the Reagan Administration, whose Cold War worldview clearly prioritized the fight against insurgents and their civilian supporters over respect for human rights." . . . '
This is getting close to hitting the nail on the head. We wanted to demonstrate how "tough" we were to the Soviets, and the hell with everything else.
 
. . . judicial processes do not apply thanks to Presidential immunity, . . .
After Richard Nixon and Watergate, the majority of Americans don't accept this. The President can do something, and it can still be illegal.

Now, I do agree that in order for President Reagan to be found guilty on straight up criminal charges, it's going to have to be sneaky, illegal actions of the sort of Iran Contra. Maybe, maybe when Reagan signed off on "certification" of human rights progress with reckless disregard of the truth.
 

CalBear

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I can't really see this one happening, unless Regan gets kidnapped while overseas or something. And I feel that would just result in a marine detachment or the 82nd Airborne getting a phone call out of the blue...
Country that did that would find the result to be... sub-optimal.
 
The thread OP chose a peculiar single instance to single out, true. "In the dock" need not refer to a strictly judicial process however. The purpose could be to simply document, as sworn and indisputable fact, that "plausibly deniable" events were in fact promoted and enabled, or even ordered outright, by the US government, not as an irresponsible aberration but by the intent of the Administration. If a President has ordered that a certain result be achieved and that people under their command will be covered because they were carrying out policy, then that fact should be confirmed and acknowledged; then in a democracy voters decide whether they want more or less of this kind of thing by electing people with a track record of doing it--or not. Immunity from strict judicial punishment might be vital to get the information out and verified so there is no more of this nonsense of "hey, your President didn't order it."

So you say that it would be sufficient to have verified information, under guarantee of immunity. That's testimonial evidence. I, for my part, said "a signed document or other comparable evidence".
I talked about a law court. You are saying a sworn, indisputable proceeding, involving someone who has the power to grant immunity from prosecution. Now, that could be some form of official fact-finding state committee. If it is to be impartial, unbiased, and credible, it has to comply with standards that are very similar to a law court; if it does not do so, then the accurate name is "political witch hunt". So I suppose you are talking about the former - something nearly as strict as a law court.
You do realize you are saying the same things as me, only in more words?

I snip more about political responsibility. That should go in political Chat.

Anyway to declare it ASB, you need to show no possible process can result in this in the real world.

Huh, not the way I see it. Who says there are no Aliens in the real universe? Aliens could land tomorrow from outer Space, and for all we know they might be like Bats. It's not impossible in the real world. It's just so unlikely that it's not worth the time of most of the posters here, and...

But revolution is a possibility. This could be a kangaroo court with the outcome fixed regardless of evidence, or standards that won't pass muster in our current system.

...yeah, revolution in the place where Reagan lived his final years, and so radical that it would sweep away the rules of evidence, the existing laws, the rights of the accused and so on and so forth. That's roughly as likely as the landing of the Aliens from Space in the form of Bats. Maybe a cat's whisker more likely. Still not enough to be taken seriously.
 
The Alzimers was starting to show in 1984, by 1995 he couldn't hide it anymore.
If put on trial in the early 1990s the stress would be a little to much. He would come apart during the trial, most likely on the witness stand. One second he'd delivering carefully scripted testimony and the next he's reciting his lines from"Bedtime for Bonzo".
His lawyers would start playing the sympathy card big time and claim that he is mentally unfit to stand trial.
 
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This American Life on Guatemalan Genocide
Washington's role is a story not worth telling

FAIR, Keane Bhatt, Aug. 1, 2013

http://fair.org/extra/this-american-life-on-guatemalan-genocide/

' . . . This American Life’s host Ira Glass, who along with his producers received a Peabody Award for the episode, seemed to indicate that he would indeed contextualize the atrocity for his 1.8 million listeners . . . '

' . . . Glass instead framed the U.S. government as a negligent bystander whose sin was solely a reluctance to speak out.

'“Embassy officials heard lots of reports about the army massacring whole villages throughout Guatemala, which they dismissed,” said Glass—until, “at the urging of the State Department back in Washington,” they went to “see for themselves if the stories were true.” This American Life’s harshest indictment against the U.S. is that, despite years of repeated massacres after Dos Erres, “the U.S. knew about it but stood by.” . . . '
And that's the part that's hard to wrap our minds around. Not only did we just stand by, we were also part of it.

FAIR is a media watchdog group which bats from the left side of the plate politically. And I think they often do some pretty damn good work.
 
. . . His lawyers would start playing the sympathy card big time and claim that he is mentally unfit to stand trial.
Reagan himself might insist on testifying. If we're very lucky, his decline from Alzheimer's might at times give a sweet spot where he has the same moral sense as a teenager. And truth be told, teenagers often take honesty and morals and ethics more seriously than us adults.

For example, Reagan might say, we had to do whatever it took to stand up to the Soviets. But we didn't have to do this. Yeah, this worked against us, not in favor of us. He might even choke up or be close to tears.

--------------------------

As I tried to say on the first page, the really high road might be discussing how an otherwise good man like Reagan could drift to participation in genocide.
 
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@Michele ,

Is this a discussion about forum rules and what stories go where? If so, I don't agree--it does not matter how probable or improbable a political event, one that does not in fact require ASB intervention, seems to you. Only the question of possibility versus impossibility bears. ASB fora are not some kind of political gulag for outcomes some people dislike. It is proper to attack premises with withering logic, but if someone believes, rightly or wrongly due to a misunderstanding of board rules that something is just in the wrong forum, they are supposed to report it for a moderator to judge that. Perhaps you felt it was courteous to invite the author to rectify what you regard as a mistake before escalating to such an action?

But no, the argument, not in terms of the possibility or improbability of the ATL, but in terms of where it belongs, continues.

The way I see it, it is not a question of aliens or mind control, it is a question of politics. What do the American people know, and when do they know it, and how do they react? From my point of view there is no question of ASB, merely judgements about what the American people are capable of, and what might motivate them.

Candidly, I believe the OP question was ill framed, in the sense that I tend to imagine this happening in a revolutionary context, and that a trial over Guatemala in particular would be odd; it should be a mere sub phase of a much larger trial over broader issues. I've said so. I've cited several possible lines of development. In my humble personal opinion the Reagan administration took a number of courses that were not good for a lot of people and I personally, at the time, expected a rather stronger reaction against it, and attribute much of the subsequent follow on to apathy borne of a sense of futility rather than a happy consensus that it was all good.

The thing about revolutions is, people rarely foresee them. The way I see the world generally working is, there are deep fault lines and powerful forces of discontent at work, generally checked, but it happens from time to time that, as Alexis de Tocqueville put it, people see the opportunity to solve many of their problems at one fell swoop. Another working definition I have of a successful revolution is, "when the Army changes sides."

Looking at France in 1788, or Tsarist Russia in early 1914, it would be easy enough to dismiss all signs of discontent as the restlessness of malcontents who would never be happy with anything and need not be taken seriously, beyond a firm hand to shut them up, which should be easily done. If you held a secret poll of all adult French subjects on the question, "Shall the monarchy be overthrown in favor of a gang of Jacobins under Robespierre?" I'm pretty sure the vote would be "No" by some 98 percent or so. Similarly the Bolsheviks were light years away from power in 1914; anyone betting Russia would have (another!) revolution within a decade would predict Social Revolutionaries with the support of the countryside peasant majority, or a clique of middle class/professionals with moderated Marxist notions loosely organized as the Mensheviks were a lot closer to holding real power and would surely prevail. In each case a crisis emerged that established leadership, which had managed to find the resources of one kind or another to maintain itself in the past, lost its footing and grip, and just a handful of years later the situation was different. One can say, ah, there were underlying factors plain to see in retrospect. The point is, those were plain only in retrospect; at the time their signs and significance seemed negligible on the scale of the composition of relevant national power.

Suppose for instance that I grant both Reagan and his anointed VP successor George H.W. Bush had their political ducks in a row much too well for any such crisis to arise, that the Army in particular was on their side firmly, and with them sufficient positive support from the powers that be and a vague confidence of the voting public they knew what they were doing that revolution was an absurdly remote fantasy. I think you'd recognize though that around 1987-1990 there was nevertheless a lot of articulate dissent and that some quite radical critics could draw remarkably large numbers of registered support. (i was around at the time to witness and participate in this myself).

Now suppose someone quite different than say G HW Bush is thrust into power, because President-elect Bush dies accidentally before his inauguration or shortly after it, leaving his VP pick J. Danforth Quayle to take office instead. On the whole the accidental President does try to govern much as Bush would have but the nation is polarized--for one thing a political witch hunt on the question of just how Bush died turns into the arrest, conviction and execution of someone on dubious evidence, and this fall guy is in fact apparently chosen to discredit liberal Democrats and radical dissenters, leading to a general law-and-order crackdown with yet more dubious outcomes. Limping along in a state of near-civil war, the Nicaraguan election of 1990 goes much as OTL, but former President Jimmy Carter is excluded from the process. OTL he was approached by the ruling Sandinista government, in part due to his conduct when observing the 1989 Panamanian election, as a trusted mediator.

It is widely understood that the 1990 election was strongly influenced by the ongoing assault of US-backed Contra forces which it was understood would end if and only if the Sandinistas lost power, so it seems likely to me that even if denied Carter as overseer, the Nicaraguan regime would have if more grudgingly still than OTL agreed to an election, and that different observers might have acceptably kept it honest enough to deliver the OTL results, a substantial victory for opposition candidate Violetta Chammoro. But Carter also played a role in persuading the Sandinistas to accept the result of the polls and brokered understandings of mutual security between them and the incoming UNO coalition. It seems entirely possible that had Carter been blocked from mediating a peaceful transition, by a White House engaged in a vendetta against Democrats in general and liberal ones in particular, regarding Carter much as they would Jesse Jackson as a grandstanding meddling fool, that peaceful transition might instead have turned into renewed civil war and Nicaragua into another Vietnam-like quagmire for US forces, since the Quayle White House would presumably back Chamorro, whereas the Sandinistas might maintain the election was stolen. If the sequence were that, recognizing superior Yankee force at work anyway, they did grudgingly turn power over, and then Chamorro were prevailed upon to crack down on them as dangerous subversives, then large numbers of Nicaraguans, many of whom I do believe preferred the Sandinistas but voted for the only realistic option for peace, denied that peace by a vengeful essentially Contra, essentially Somozacist new regime, would again back the revolutionaries and thus nothing but armed US force could uphold the new government in Managua.

Bogged down in a developing Vietnam like quagmire, but one that develops slowly enough that its full implications are unclear in November 1990, by then as OTL Saddam Hussein would probably attack Kuwait and entangle the Administration in yet another costly and major foreign war at the same time. However in 1990, the Republicans sense more opportunity than risk, play heavily on patriotism and the opportunity to dispel the Vietnam malaise with glorious victory, and the ongoing escalation in Central America takes a back burner in the news cycle; Republicans win a narrow majority in the House for the first time since the 1940s and take this as a mandate for a sweeping and firm conservative agenda, including of course massive use of military force, compounding the mess in Nicaragua and neighboring states being destabilized by the apparent unrelenting demands of US supremacy and vengefulness in the region. Routing a wave of popular volunteer enlistment to the Middle East, the less popular Central American conflicts are increasingly fought by largely Latino "economic draftees"--and indeed soon the real draft is reinstated, with the classic pattern of easy channels of legal evasion or mitigation via alternative forms of service--such as President Dan Quayle himself had opted for with important political connections when he would have been liable for service in Vietnam, with a stint in the National Guard in the USA instead--the draft to regular Army service in the increasingly unpopular Central American theatre falls heavily on minorities and less well off white youths.

As in Vietnam but even more rapidly and corrosively, the forces in Central America are polarized, with some actually developing much more sympathy for their Latin American enemies than was possible for American soldiers to develop directly for their Vietnamese foes twenty years before. The very largely Latino rank and file are severely destabilized with conflicting sympathies especially as conservative initiatives against welfare programs at home and a general relaxation of the notion that bigotry need be disparaged and held in check, joined in their dismay by African American soldiers and a lot of white ones too. Officers are gravely concerned; the collapse of the USSR is seen as a respite of sorts which the Quayle administration takes credit for, but this is credited to them only by sharply partisan conservatives; the nation is deeply polarized and the semi-criminalized Democrats are fighting desperately for their positions.

The 1990 debacle mainly defeated moderate, machine type Democrats while actually seeing gains in formerly securely Republican districts with some rather radical candidates backing an increasingly radicalized urban base. Administrative, Congressional and state initiatives to severely roll back access to legal abortion is expected by conservatives to consolidate their hold with affirmation of family values, as are other backlashes against feminism generally and a pushback against gay rights. Then the economy melts down, and again the conservative response which weighs heavily against the unemployed and workers and the poor generally in favor of supply side tax cuts, program privatization and other fashionable Chicago School nostrums (the same shock treatment they push for the Russian Republic and Eastern Europe generally) is expected to demoralize the left and consolidate the presumed populist support for conservatism across the board. The Republicans know they are in for a fight in '92 but also are confident they will win it. Democrats on the other hand have their backs to the wall.

The outcome then surprises everyone; the Democrats, despite manifest voter suppression in some key states, come back very strong, taking over 2/3 of the House and with 62 seats in the Senate, and big wins in state legislatures and gubernatorial elections as well, appear to have won a sweep. In addition to that their candidate for President wins a slim majority in the popular vote. But...he does not win the Electoral Votes, a very narrow win for Quayle--and one that turns crucially on several states known widely to have suffered major voter suppression.

In no mood to compromise, the House, its composition changed immediately upon the November outcomes being certified, passes a motion to impeach President Quayle on grounds of complicity in election fraud. Debate is minimal; everyone knows the issues at stake. The President orders summary action against key new Congressional figures and prepares to bring pressure on key Senators, but Congress affirms the immunity of its members, dismisses the charges against its members, and in this context key police and military figures choose to stand on Constitutional arguments against particular executive orders and support the political process. Proceeding to an impeachment trial in which key Republican Senators defect from party solidarity--these being ideological moderates with misgivings about the direction of recent policy who are also up for election in 1994; the Democrats just need 5--Quayle is convicted, his Vice President, threatened with another round of formal charges and quite complicit in enough actions to be convicted in turn, is persuaded to resign and the new House Speaker is installed. Facing vigorous public but clearly minority condemnation by angry conservatives, an Air Force high officer attempts to lead a general military coup but the majority of officers, being more realistic about the dire state of general morale in the military despite victory in the Middle East, refuse to back him; after some violence and bloodshed, the military recognizes the former Speaker as President.

Being still challenged in their legitimacy, the new Democratic alliance of Presidency and Congress takes a series of actions over the next two years to fight back in the Culture Wars, beginning with negotiating withdrawal from various Central American conflicts which have mixed outcomes--in an overseen and fair election for instance, Nicaragua again does not elect the Sandinistas, who as OTl are required to campaign democratically for power, but the thumb of US power is now clearly off the scales. To deal with the tanked economy the Democrats launch a series of infrastructural and other initiatives, while piecemeal tax code revisions reverse the Reagan era cuts on top rates and indeed raise them somewhat beyond 1970s levels, in particular to help pay for a sweeping national health program on the model of Good Medicaid for All--a "Bismarckian" regulated private insurance market is fostered to supplement levels of care beyond the basic but pretty comprehensive standard levels, and states are relieved of their share of Medicaid costs by total Federal funding of a uniform national system paid in part with increased income and corporate income taxes, increases in other Federal taxes, and an increased payroll tax, upgraded from the Medicare tax. That is heavy but it is deductible on Federal and state income taxes, states with heavy income taxes and other taxes can reduce them due to being relieved of their medical programs, and with private insurance optional, employers in addition to their half of the increased payroll tax are required to also match funds as their employees choose up to an upper limit determined by the net funds that companies with good programs paid formerly in combination with their half of the Medicare tax, the cap being set to leave the companies paying out the same amounts as before, if all workers elect to buy supplemental insurance.

Also, in view of the major scandals of the 1970s and 80s of corporate raiding of union pension funds, unions are guaranteed the right and encouraged to form cooperative non-profit medical funding pools under complete union control (subject to general regulation) in competition with private insurance; eventually the standard is a large, nearly universal AFL-CIO run consortium that non-union workers may opt into at slightly higher rates and which is lifetime portable, with a permanent investment according to time of subscription and scale of contribution; the residual private insurance market is patronized mainly by the wealthy and is highly competitive, being purely voluntary as the basic universal Medicaid, which incorporates Medicare and all welfare medical programs in one standard, is pretty comprehensive and near-universally accepted by private health care providers because it pays at a reasonable rate for all well-justified medical needs; since justification is generally by simple documentation of existing conditions and generally is straightforward and non-controversial, they generally pay very promptly and quite reliably for all standard treatments.

Another outcome of the electoral crisis of 1992 is that the Democratic blowout is seen as a clear repudiation of the idea that Americans support stringent abortion restrictions; it is evident that actually attempting to impose them drove much turnout, so Federal law restores broad rights;and Medicaid For All does not cover it, but supplemental insurance covering reproductive issues the public program still demurs is not expensive and can be covered in part with employer subsidy like any other policy--the AFL-CIO Union Medical Fund includes it automatically in the general policy paid at the same rates by men and women alike. The general economic effect of the health care reform is to tax the rich to transfer funds to the poor, which is of course denounced, but the new Democratic majority cites the shift of income generally from workers to the corporate-financial sector that prevailed from the mid-70s to 1992 to justify both the higher taxes and the partial transfer back. In general policy the effect of Democratic interventionism is to prime the pump for the coming mid-90s boom and guarantee that workers will benefit from it in greater proportion than OTL.

Since obviously the high tax brackets and corporate sector will scream bloody murder, the Democrats must keep up their campaign of ideological justification by arguing that the previous regime egregiously shifted the balance too far the other way, with unjustifiable policies corrosive both to living standards and general morale of the majority, citing the dysfunctional effects of fashionable deregulation and "supply side" policy generally, and tying these in ideologically to more spectacular acts of moral dubiousness, such as broad support for terroristic but corporate-friendly regimes overseas, twisting arms to privatize formerly public services (such as telecommunications) in Third World nations to the profit of a few and deteriorating service at higher cost for the many, and generally seeking to nullify public democratic power to check private excess, associated with extreme violence and deteriorating standards of civil society. This ties them into ongoing muckraking against the specific policies of the Qualye years, and that by continuity takes them back to the 1980s and the Reagan years as well.

Republicans may well respond that Democrats were complicit in this, but many of those who were have been removed from office in years since, by Republican vendettas that were more effective against those with more questionable records, and the rest simply apologize and add their testimony, arguing that what appeared to be the will of the people as well as the consensus of fashionable academic think tanks in retrospect was manipulated and deceptively presented, and that as a party the party of the common people was made to suffer for their cooperation and complicity by their victorious intimidators. They say "oops" and stress how they have seen the light since then, and also point to opposition and caveats at the time they had to pay prices for.

The economic and moral abuses of the previous regime being rhetorically fused into one, the dynamic is for the Democrats to prove their case, and this leads to the post-office impeachment of Ronald Reagan despite his age and infirmity. Quayle, in this scenario, being complicit in an open and shut case of subversion of the political process, would be tried in regular courts after Senate conviction and removal of immunity. The scenario for Reagan would be different. It is essential to tear off the mask of plausible deniability and establish systematic policy backing values in conflict with ostensible American values, to make the political choice stark and clear on the basis of documented fact. It is not necessary to personally punish a man who will emerge from the process as a demonstrated doofus, easily led astray by evil counselors and put up as the facade of a corrupt order, but personally incapable of anything that might be described as evil genius. To be sure some of his detractors--me, for instance--would hold that in a general way he certainly did understand what he was doing; my theory is that as Augustus Caesar of a post-republican age he was in charge, appropriately as a professional actor and spokesman, of his own image as national patriarch--our King as it were, while others ran the state under his aegis. OTOH if you wanted to see me defend the man's complexities I'd talk about how seeing the docudrama "The Day After" on network TV in 1984 his attitudes toward the prospects of nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union changed--under Reagan we lived, as cartoonist Jules Feiffer put it, in "Movie America" indeed!

As for legal correctness--I am not a lawyer, nor am I the OP of this TL; if it were my idea to have a TL where US political leadership is under trial in any sense---well strike that; if it were my idea to envision how to bring past leaders to trial right here in real life--I'd probably PM a couple prominent members and ask them if they had time from their busy real life to advise me on the actual legal facts on the ground. Your insistence on meticulous documentation would for instance take Adolf Hitler off the hook for the Shoah; as I understand it no clear "Fueher Order" for the execution of the Jews or other Holocaust victim categories that were not political in the normal sense has ever been found, a thing that Holocaust deniers seize upon as significant on the grounds that generally speaking the Reich did run on definite orders from Hitler, meticulously written. (That no such written order has been found I base on taking a course called "The Holocaust Lectures" at Sonoma State University in the mid-90s, perhaps one has been found since?) To me it makes no difference, he was clearly responsible by reasonable standards. Would Hitler in fact get off on these grounds of specific complicity in the Shoah in its full extent in a modern American court trial conducted by normal common law and statute rules? I do not know, but several people I could name on the site have the kind of expertise and experience I think would clarify it. Also, consider that the problem of organized crime, and other phenomena like secret societies such as the Ku Klux Klan present similar dilemmas; racketeering in particular is something very much like dealing with a legitimate government that keeps two sets of books, and might have the savvy to keep one of those entirely in their heads. And lo, we have established special laws and procedures with names like RICO to address these problems of holding accountable powerful heads of organizations who can enforce discipline even on minions who must inevitably suffer serious punishment at the hands of the law. As others have said, it might not even be necessary to impeach even a President first to hold them "in the bar," at least for purposes of fact finding--exactly the point on which Nixon defied special prosecutor Cox and the Supreme Court found him in violation!

So, I am not sure whether your issue is that you honestly think this thread is inherently and truly ASB and must remain so even if a better TL writer than me were to meticulously research things like jurisprudence, muster sufficiently hard evidence not personally known to me or show that within the range of law as actually practiced your ideas of what does and does not count are actually a bit mistaken, or alternatively devise a process leading to massive revolution between 1982 and 1994 that accounts for a trial of some kind practiced according to frankly arbitrary and inadmissible means.

The OP said very very little; knowing their track record I suppose they may have had some more concrete thing in mind. People objected to the idea that any foreign tribunal could get access, but yet another track to run down to justify the title would be major events involving the collapse of US power generally and our subordination to some global order, or the hegemony of some other surviving state. Suppose the big 1983-84 nuclear war that definitely seemed in the cards at the time (I was around and remember how likely it looked) explored by several TLs here including the whole "Protect and Survive" franchise happened, and out of the devastated wreck some lightly damaged, relatively, region like say Australia picked up the pieces, and in the course of it adopted the attitude Reagan was personally at fault for WWIII, at least in part, and resolved to capture him, extradite him and throw the book at him, by their standards of law. The ASB part might be anyone surviving in any condition for such an act of global reach, but who is to say the Secret Service in their wisdom don't decide to secrete the POTUS on a nuclear submarine which subsequently gets captured? The tribunal could be some ragtag gang of American survivor-fanatics, or Canadians, or insurgent Cuban militants fleeing the ruins of Cuba for the less densely if more massively in total blasted ruins of the USA itself, using organization and discipline to survive and prosper on a leveled playing field where no one has the technical advantage any more. Or, some entirely internal meltdown could leave a USA ruined by civil war at the mercy of some foreign power.

If you think the USA is just so very stable and settled that revolution or any of these turmoils are just unthinkable, and even after a mid-80s total nuclear exchange the guardians of the President must be invincible, I just want to point out that the election of 1992 was one of the weirdest on record, topped only by that of 1860 and the election of Woodrow Wilson by the Republican split between Taft and Teddy Roosevelt in 1912-for H. Ross Perot's third party run scored far higher votes than any save in those years. Perot actually beat Bush in Maine, putting Bush down to number 3; Clinton won a solid majority of EV, but with a plurality of PV of just 43 percent! Wilson did slightly worse in PV but won all but 8 EV in 1912. I hardly think it is reasonable to decree the USA revolution proof in any decade.

I don't think this thread is based on the strongest premises, indeed the AHC could use a lot more support from its own author. But by golly I do not think it is ASB and that moving it there would in fact undermine the real intent of having that forum.
 
In his later years, President Ford apologized for East Timor.

Indonesia was a former Dutch colony, and East Timor a former Portuguese colony. When East Timor became independent in 1975, there was fighting among various factions with some loss of life. The left-wing Fretilin came to power. If it makes a difference in your personal universe, there were then several months of relative peaceful rule. Indonesia invaded on Dec. 7, 1975. And because Indonesia was an "ally" and East Timor was "communist," that was it, we supported Indonesia no questions asked.

And during the ensuing years of the Indonesian occupation, between 1/6 to 1/3 of the population of East Timor was killed either directly or by manipulating food shortages. This was between 100,000 to 200,000 human beings out of a civilian population of approximately 600,000.

Gerald R. Ford: The American Presidents Series: The 38th President, 1974-1977, Douglas Brinkley (Tulane University), 2007.

https://books.google.com/books?id=A...=onepage&q="look Ford later recalled"&f=false

"Look," Ford later recalled. "I don't want to pass the blame. Given the brutality that Indonesia exhibited in East Timor, our support was wrong. Henry was not infallible. I didn't realize just how bad the situation would become. You're got to understand that, in the scope of things, Indonesia wasn't too much on my radar. Hindsight is easy. I should have questioned Henry more about the situation. My record shows, like Helsinki, that I personally cared about human rights. I listened to the experts on Indonesia. That was a mistake. At the time, though, it didn't seem like a mistake. We needed allies after Vietnam. Henry—and I'm not exonerating myself—goofed."

When asked if he wanted to apologize to history for East Timor, Ford said, "Yes. I mean I truly, honestly feel for those families which suffered losses. I'm sorry for them. The whole thing was tragic but I only learned the extent to what happened there after I left Washington. Then it was too late."[53]

[53] Author interview with Gerald Ford, Rancho Mirage, Calif. March 23, 2003.

It's not a great apology. Notice how he kind of throws Henry Kissinger under the bus. I guess we could look at it as part of a pretty long, pretty open conversation with the author of the book.

Maybe Reagan could have given a similar, or better, apology regarding Guatemala.
 
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and lest anyone thinks I'm only criticizing Republican presidents . . .

Jimmy Carter’s Blood-Drenched Legacy

Matt Peppe, Aug. 18, 2015

https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/18/jimmy-carters-blood-drenched-legacy/

.

.

Guatemala, 1977

'The Carter administration issued a report critical of the human rights records of the military government and officially cut off aid. However, Blum argues that this was little more than a public relations stunt while tangible support continued: “the embargoes were never meant to be more than partial, and Guatemala also received weapons and military equipment from Israel, at least part of which was covertly underwritten by Washington. As further camouflage, some of the training of Guatemala’s security forces was reportedly maintained by transferring it to clandestine sites in Chile and Argentina.” [2] . . . '

East Timor, 1977

' . . . The genocidal slaughter reached its peak in 1977, On March 1, 95 members of the Australian Parliament sent a letter to Carter claiming the Indonesian troops were carrying out “atrocities” and asking the American President “to comment publicly on the situation in East Timor.” [3]

'The response was crickets. Carter ramped up aid with funding and weapons to the murderous Indonesian regime, brazenly flaunting the human rights requirements imposed on American aid. . . '

.

.

[1] Blum, William. Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II – Updated Through 2003. Common Courage Press, 2008. Kindle edition.

[2] Ibid.

[3] as quoted in Chomsky, Noam and Edward S. Herman. The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism: The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume 1. Boston: South End Press, 1979, pg. 171.
My country's foreign policy was often ugly, stupid, and unnecessary during the cold war. And most of the time it didn't seem to make a hell of a lot of difference which party was in power.
 
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President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination, Richard Reeves, Simon & Schuster, 2005.

https://books.google.com/books?id=C...ed by a New York Times/CBS News poll"&f=false

page 166:

' . . . The President had been stunned by a New York Times/CBS News poll reporting: "Only 25 percent of those surveyed knew that the Administration supports the Government of El Salvador, only 13 percent know that it sides with the insurgents in Nicaragua and only 8 percent know both alignments."

[July 1, 1983]
I think this is true for Americans in general and probably for people who are citizens of other countries as well — we don't know a whole lot about our country's foreign policy.

And for those of us who are citizens of the United States, yes, a goodly percentage of our fellow citizens want us to be tough on foreign policy, but even some of the more extreme advocates of this approach will still draw the line at g for genocide.
 
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