Newt Gingrich, resurrected in some Republican attempt at recapturing legitimacy, has lambasted President Obama’s acceptance of a gift from Hugo Chavez as well as smiling and shaking hands with the so-far El Presidente for Life of Venezuela. Joining Newt are minor-league “Who the hell is that?” Republicans Judd Gregg and John Ensign have even jumped on the disgraced former Speaker’s coattails to chime in on the weakening of America’s image abroad.
Newt’s smarmy face was plastered all over Fox news and other political television shows invoking Jimmy Carter’s “weakness” and the collapse of American power.

Or to quote Newt himself:

“I think it sends a terrible signal to all of Latin America, and a terrible signal about how the new administration regards dictators,” Gingrich said on Fox, also citing Obama’s willingness to talk to Iran, his handling of North Korea and overtures to the Castro government in Cuba.“

Let us see if Newt’s assertion is supported by evidence from history.

Name: Augusto Pinochet

Country: Chile

Biography: Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was a brutal neo-Fascist who ruthlessly rooted out dissidents by throwing them into jails, torturing them, and creating a whole new class of people : the disappeared (desaparecidos in Spanish) – people who would suddenly cease to exist officially. Pinochet rose to power at the head of a military coup d’etat and remained the head of a military Junta until Democratic rule was re-established in the 1990’s. During that time he was in direct contact with the Nixon and Ford administrations, particularly with Henry Kissinger, as exposed by newly declassified documents from the National Security Archives.

The United States had assisted in the rise of the dictator and helped keep him in power during his years in Chile. He later fled the country to London where, in 1998, he died while awaiting extradition to Chile for Crimes against Humanity. Additionally, he sponsored terrorist acts in other countries – and other continents – during his almost 30 years in power.

Name: Alfredo Cristiani

Country: El Slavador

Biography: A strongman in his own right, Cristiani was a favorite of proto-Neo Cons in their war on communism. Having brutally repressed so-called “Leftists” such as six Jesuit priests who were teaching radical ideas such as mathematics and Latin at Central American University. Cristiani has, like Pinochet, enjoyed the warm handshakes of American officials such as President George H.W. Bush in what he termed a “modified photo opportunity.” Cristiani is also wanted for crimes against humanity and has been linked to state-sponsored terrorism both within El Salvador and throughout Central America.

Name: Fulgencio Batista

Country: Cuba

Biography: Having rose to power at the head of a military coup d’etat, Batista became a “U.S.-friendly” dictator in 1933. Despite his toppling of a Democratically-elected leader, Batista enjoyed the tolerance of the United States who, through the person of Ambassador Benjamin Sumner Welles, said “I will lay down no specific terms; the matter of your government is a Cuban matter and it is for you to decide what you will do about it.” And decide he did; Batista’s regime was known far and wide for its corruption and ruthless crushing of dissidents; American mobsters used Cuba as a money laundering racket to legitimize their ill-gotten gains.

Additionally, As American sugar companies found it increasingly cheaper to purchase their sugar from Hawaii or to have it extracted from sugar beets, Batiste oversaw the expansion of the “Colono” system; in other words, Cuban sugar farm workers who lived on or near a sugar plantation were not allowed to leave or seek work elsewhere and were forced to provide labor to the lan

dlord. In other words, Batista re-instituted slavery on Cuba. During the Communist uprising that eventually brought Fidel Castro to power, Batista received American military aid and hardware until around 1958, when even the most optimistic CIA agents realized Batista’s corrupt government could not withstand an increasingly-popular Communist insurgency. The Bay of Pigs incident was initially intended to RETURN Batista to power. Batista died in 1973 without ever facing charges for his corruption and repression.

Name: Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi

Country: Iran

Biography: The Shah of Iran was a strong ally of the United States essentially since his father came to power in 1925. During Mohammad Shah’s rule, which began in 1941, concessions made to Standard Oil, (which would later become Exxon and Mobil) as well as Shell (a Dutch company) and British Petroleum, allowed for nigh-indefinite exploitation of Iran’s “natural and mineral resources” for a fixed price up-front which, naturally, went to supporting his lavish lifestyle while everyday Iranians were kept in relative poverty and worked for low wages. In 1953, the CIA-directed “Operation Ajax” unseated the populist Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadeq and re-instituted the Shah as leader of Iran.

During Muhammad Shah’s reign, he instituted a regime of modernization which included banning of religion in public places, domestic spying, torture of minor political dissidents and exile of major dissidents (such as the Ayatollah Khomeini who went to France), violent repression of expressions of Democratic desire, and Iran’s own “desaparecidos“. His regime was so widely despised that now-Nobel Prize Laureate Shirine Ebadi (a Judge in the Shah’s judicial system) initially welcomed the “freedom” promised by a revolution. During the Shah’s reign, Iran was considered the cornerstone of American Middle East policy (i.e. containing the Soviet Threat) and was the beneficiary of American military aid including F-16 fighter aircraft and M-60 tanks. After the 1979 coup, the Shah fled Iran but because of his repressive regime’s reputation, he could find no sanctuary in European countries. Eventually the Shah settled in the United States where he later died of cancer.

Name: Saddam Hussein

Country: Iraq

Biography: An ignorant peasant growing up in one of Iraq’s largest cities, Saddam Hussein was a member of the Ba’athist Nationalist party which had been formed in Syria a few decades earlier. Iraqi Ba’athists (or as Syrians called them “dirty Tikriti bandits”) were a domestic terrorist group operating within Iraq. Saddam Hussein, like the other thugs and criminals that made up the Ba’athist party in the 1950’s, was in and out of prison in Iraq. His lucky break came when he literally jumped the gun and instead of being back-up, became the actual assassin of Iraq’s then-leader Abd al-Karim Qassim.

Hussein launched a “political” career soon after and rose through the ranks of the Ba’athist party, mostly through intimidation and assassination. In 1979, he became the dictator of Iraq and in 1980 launched a war with Iran as an American proxy. Iraq received satellite imagery of the battlefield, German chemicals, French vehicles, and British training as well as Soviet arms and armor. The decade-long war was encouraged by the Reagan administration and highlighted by the oft-cited picture of U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, shaking hands with the dictator in 1983.

In 1988, Saddam Hussein, using American satellite imagery, Soviet helicopters and aircraft, and German chemicals, dropped nerve gas bombs on the village of Halabja in 1988, killing men, women, and children. But this was not an isolated incident; in fact, the Kurdish people were bombed as often as Iranians and had developed a fairly sophisticated system of air raid shelters to protect them when Saddam’s bombs rained down. Ironically, it is these very shelters which sealed the fated of so many in Halabja – the gas, which is heavier than air, collected in those bomb shelters. Additionally, Saddam Hussein killed political rivals, authorized the torture and rape of prisoners, ordered summary executions of suspected opponents, funded terrorists abroad, and violated the Geneva Conventions…all well before 1991 when he invaded Kuwait (with what he thought was American blessing, by the way). Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by an Iraqi jury in 2006.

Name: Pervez Musharraf

Country: Pakistan

Biography: A military leader and general, Pervez Musharraf ousted the elected leader of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, in 1999. From 1999 to slightly after 2001, Pakistan (along with Saudi Arabia) were essentially the only two countries supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan (Pakistan supported it militarily and Saudi Arabia supported it financially). Musharraf suspended the country’s constitution, jailed dissidents, jailed the lawyers who protested the jailing of dissidents, jailed the judges who refused to jail the lawyers, and received American military and financial aid while doing it. Additionally, there were systematic repressions of protesters and delays of Democratic elections from 1999 until his impeachment in 2008.

In 2004, Abd al-Qadeer Khan, Pakistan’s Oppenheimer, was caught selling nuclear secrets to Libya and other “rogue” states (possibly North Korea and potentially, al-Qaeda) and was not arrested, jailed, interrogated, or even reprimanded by Musharraf. The investigation into Khan’s role has also been suppressed by the Bush administration and not yet delved into by the Obama administration.

Name: Chiang Kai Shek

Country: China, Taiwan

Biography: Chiang Kai Shek was an Army officer during the Kuomintang’s overthrow of China’s hereditary emperor in 1912. Chiang took power in 1925 after his mentor died of cancer and set about quelling the other warlords of the now-fractured China. Although he was instrumental in the American plans for ousting the Japanese from China throughout World War Two, Chiang had made several secret deals with the Japanese, including the use of Japanese military trainers and specialists, in fighting the rising Chinese Communist party (which had called a truce with the KMT during World War Two). Chiang’s KMT promised prosperity, order, and progress but instead repressed dissent and was marred by systemic corruption. The KMT famously fled to the island of Formosa, now called Taiwan (or the Chinese Republic of Taiwan) in 1949 where it became a dependent of the United States. Chiang ruled – without benefit of open and free elections – until his death in 1975.

Name: Zhou Enlai

Country: China (the People’s Republic of China)

Biography: While the Communist party of China has established its dominance over the Chinese mainland as early as 1949, fought a proxy war with the United States in Korea, and asserted its “sovereignty” in Tibet, the United States refused to recognize the Communist regime and blocked efforts to admit it into the United Nations.

It is widely recognized that China also played a significant role in funding and supporting the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam war against the French in the 1950’s and the Americans in the 1960’s. Still, despite then- and ongoing gross human rights violations including summary execution of drug addicts, dissidents, and political opponents, the execution or jailing of artists and musicians during the “Cultural Revolution,” constant belligerent acts against Japan, Taiwan and other neighboring states, weapons sales to North Korea, Sudan, and Iran, and the suppression of Democratic impulses (Tiannamen Square, 1989), China was visited by Richard Nixon in 1973 and has since enjoyed de facto “most favored nation” trading status until the 1990’s when China was finally granted de jure, and permanent, “most favored nation status.”

Name: Osama Bin Laden

Country: Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan

Biography: An economics major, Osama bin Laden’s first contact with America was as a mujahedeen, or “Islamic Holy Fighter,” in Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden received training via the CIA as well as arms and equipment to take on the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden used terror tactics to break the will of Soviet fighters, including suicide bombings and the photographed executions of Soviet prisoners of war. After the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden offered to fight on behalf of the Kuwaitis against Saddam Hussein (who he saw as a secularist and nationalist poised to desecrate the sacred Saudi homeland). After Kuwaitis declined and the Saudis allowed Americans to establish military bases on Saudi soil, Osama bin Laden turned his focus on the United States. Considered (now) the most heinous mass murderer in international terrorism’s history.

Other “dishonorable” mentions:
Hosni Mubarak of Egypt - President for life since 1981; repression of dissent, secret prisons, torture, corruption

King Abd Allah bin Abd al-Aziz of Saudi Arabia- King and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia; repression of dissent, repression of non-Wahabi Islam, summary execution, possible slavery of non-Arabs, prolific death sentences, prisoner mutilations.
The Contras of Nicaragua – murder, rape, beatings, kidnapping and disruption of harvests, American support through the Iran-Contra scandal.

Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam, South Vietnam – torture, rape, disappearances, corruption, drug trafficking.
Syngman Rhee of South Korea – strongman dictator, torture, indefinite detention of suspected communists, cowardice (he fled to safety while encouraging people in Seoul to stay put during the Korean War), several massacres

*Sigh* Oh, Mr. Gingrich – History just does not back you up on this one. Perhaps if you spent more time reading truly historical records instead of making up your own information, you’d be a better informed person and politician. Of course we know you’d never let the truth get in the way of a good photo opportunity.

*****************

Tweeters:
Click the “Tweet This” button and easily send us to your followers on Twitter.

Peace Y’all