Talk:Iran–Contra affair

The previous version was lefty?!?!? I thought it was right-wing. The entire article approaches the affair from a US-centric point of view. For the rest of the world the main issue was not which American politician said this or that but the murder and terrorism caused by America's unlawful assault on a defenceless third world country. That seems to be the major fact of the incident -- where is the death toll for example? David Byron

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Well, the scandal was a US scandal, so it would have to be a somewhat US-centric article by definition. But otherwise, I agree with you that it is important to note that the US supported a terrorist group (the contras) against a democratic government in Nicaragua.

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The Iran-Contra Affair is the US-centric incident as encompassed by the Congressional inquiry.

There probably should be a separate entry on the total US involvement in Nicaragua, which would cover the death toll, etc.

--TheCunctator

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1. I don't agree that the contras were terrorists -- at least not compared with the Sandinistas. What are your sources?

1. Free elections and the appearance of free elections are different.

1. I absolutely refuse to engage in an editing war over this. Any of my changes which get reverted, I shall assume you have good reason.

-- Ed Poor

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The Contras were specifically trained by the CIA, and engaged in terrorist actions, including killing civilians, targeting infrastructural elements (power stations, etc.), and assassinating political and military figures.

If we're going to go around calling people terrorists, then they were terrorists.

One of the presaging scandals to the Iran-Contra Affair was the discovery of CIA guerrilla tactics and assassination manuals in Contra possession.

I don't know how much the Sandinistas engaged in the same actions when they were a guerrilla force, but the Contras at least were definitely a pretty brutal bunch.

The Sandinistas were definitely not perfect, and it's an open question how repressive or militaristic they would have been if the US hadn't been supporting the contra forces. Other than right-wing US elements, it seems pretty much everyone thought they were doing a good job.

But that doesn't mean they were--maybe they were as bad as Reagan claimed. But I suspect their main crime was to receive lots of support from the Soviet Union. I think your edits have been useful and, as long as you don't consider this a war, I hope you'll still contribute.

A useful but unabashedly pro-Sandinista reference, and an engrossing tale in any right, is The Death of Ben Linder.

--TheCunctator

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Currently the article is about as biased as an article on September 11th that somehow manages to talk about the Palestinians and Osama's point of view but never gets round to mentioning anyone was ever killed! The US backed terrorism is (I think?) unique in provoking the international court to declare America's actions an unlawful use of force, that their 'humanitarian aid' was not humanitarian at all and ruling that the US had to cease any military action or support of military action and pay reparations to Nicaragua. Instead the US increased the slaughter in one of the best documented and most incredibly barbaric acts of terrorism of last century which all countries except Israel opposed the US over.

Ed what basis do you have for calling the Sandanistas terrorists? David Byron

David, I think your comments here are very one-sided. When you say things like "the international court", you're presenting a very skewed picture of how nations interact. There is no "the" international court. The rules of the courts in question specifically permit nations to completely opt out of their judgments -- and that's what usually happens! The judges of the court were and are from such bastions of democracy and freedom as China and Cuba -- their judgment is seriously in doubt in these and all related matters.

Notice that I didn't say one word of defense here of U.S. actions in Nicaragua. That's a totally separate matter from the question of whether a fair encyclopedia article ought to be writt in the manner that you would have us write it!

Should the court decision be covered here? Yes! Absolutely! And in a NPOV way. Words like 'slaughter' and 'terrorism' should probably be avoided completely unless we sufficiently distance ourselves from them. Instead of saying "Instead, the US increased the slaughter..." We should say... well, I'll leave the NPOV version as an exercise for the reader.  :-)

--Jimbo Wales

I've given up on expecting any NPOV from the articles here, and once again I have refused to update the article because of comments like yours. You've even deleted my /Talk comments before this. Despite this I believe Ed is more likely to reconsider his position than most here, so I thought it was worth commenting on the extreme bias of the article.

Jimbo, you said "There is no "the" international court. The rules of the courts in question specifically permit nations to completely opt out of their judgments -- and that's what usually happens!". He is talking about the International Court of Justice, and the International Court of Justice is an international court, if not the international court. Secondly, no international court permits nations to "completely opt out of their judgements". Once the state has agreed to accept the Court's jurisdiction, it is bound under international law to accept and implement the Court's judgements. The United States voluntarily accepted the ICJ's jursidiction by lodging a declaration of acceptance of compulsory jurisdiction, and by becoming party to treaties that provided for the ICJ to have jurisdiction over the treaty. The ICJ found that it had jurisdiction, it found that the US had violated international law (see Nicaragua v. United States) and the US was therefore obligated to obey its judgement. Furthermore, yes, since the Court represents all the nations in the world, it includes judges from some dictatorships. But it also includes judges from democracies -- and some of the judges from democracies found against the US as well. Furthermore, the judges are independent -- they are not permitted to take instructions from their government. -- SJK

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I don't honestly find labelling the Contras terrorists more helpful than calling them freedom fighters. I don't want to get into a mutual overwriting game any more than Ed, but I too would be intrigued to see why he thinks the Sandinistas were more terroristic than their enemies. I've done my best to be neutral in my latest edit. But please let's leave "terrorists" and "freedom fighters" out of this. David Parker

I disagree. With terrorism so much in use as a word, and this case is so open and shut. Has there ever been a better documented case? No international court ever ruled on the IRA or Hamas or whatever. If you cannot use the word "terrorist" here then you'd have to remove the word from all the references to September 11th too. This was an incredibly bloodthirsty horrific set of events that went on and on. The US government's 'opinion' as one of the combatants is surely biased and every other country in the UN general assembly but Israel opposed their 'opinion'.

Also, I just created a page on the International Court of Justice case you referred to: Nicaragua v. United States -- SJK

Maybe it should be a sub-page? I don't think the page needs the "US point of view" to be NPOV. That would be to suggest the court itself was biased. I don't think anyone is suggesting that. If they are then that's a whole nother kettle of fish entirely. If there was a US POV on that page you'd need a balancing anti-US POV in addition to the court's findings.

Well, maybe not--for one thing, the entire U.S. response should be presented on the case, meaning the U.S. reasoning for why the court didn't have jurisdiction. The purpose of the page, presumably, is to explain the facts of this important case, including its political and historical significance, on the views of prominent observers. Its purpose is not to show how the U.S. was wrong, even if some people would like to use the page to do that.

But, beyond that, I'd certainly agree that the official U.S. point of view on its involvement in Nicaragua should be explained elsewhere. --LMS

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Jimbo, by just about any accounting, the actions of the contras brand them as terrorists. They were really, really awful. BTW, some of this discussion is already covered in the doublespeak entry. I'll probably work on the guerrilla entry--I have some good research on that I could plug in.--TheCunctator

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This is disgusting. Obviously, some people don't brand them as terrorists, and obviously, some people do. It is not our job to tell them who's right on this. It's our job to present the controversy fairly. This means that we should be concerned about presenting the pro-Contra view, even if it is repugnant to us. If you (personally, whoever you are) can't, or if you think you can't (which I would interpret as meaning that you're just unwilling--certainly you're all smart enough), then please don't work on the article!

I find this sort of debate strange. Why are we engaged in a debate over this? Why? I don't see what particular paragraphs in the article are affected. If you can see that, then why don't you just change them?

I have a formula that I should probably add to the new neutral point of view article: if you think there's something wrong with some paragraph, from a neutrality point of view, and you think someone's going to disagree with you about that, then (1) make the changes you think are necessary, (2) quote the paragraph on the talk page, (3) explain how it is that your changes made the paragraph more fully unbiased--not more "correct" in the sense of representing your view, but more fully unbiased. I think in most cases, if we were to get into this habit, there won't be much left for people to argue about on talk pages (as long as people are thinking clearly).

I have to say I am bothered a fair bit by those who constantly attempt to represent their own views on politically charged topics, and they seem not to care at all about whether other points of view are represented fairly. Yes, that is your job. If you don't commit yourself to doing that, Wikipedia will be much, much weaker for it. I think that's already the case, actually, and I think it should stop. I think we should all be engaged in explaining each other's points of view as sympathetically as possible! --LMS