The Banana Republic Model

Bewildered neocon strategists are looking at a page in their playbook titled 'Banana Republic' for a way out of the Iraq quagmire. So the election win by Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua must qualify as an intercepted pass. A reinvented Christian Ortega, with the support of his new anti-abortion ally, the Catholic Church, succeeded in his third attempt to gain the presidency since being voted out in 1990. The prospect of a former Marxist enemy coming back to power after their hero, Ronnie Raygun, defeated the Sandinistas in a conterinsurgency war set off tocsins in the neo-con world. Their reliable war horse, Oliver North, arrived in Managua to convince Nicaraguans to reject "outside interference"--an ironic reference to the support of Ortega by Venezuela's mecurial Hugo Chavez. Ambassador Paul Trivelli threatened US aid would be cut off if Ortega won. Some Republican congressmen promised to pass legislation to prohibit sending remittances home for voting the wrong way. Nicaraguans elected Ortega anyway.

Reagan's hardline policy towards Central America is still considered a success by neoconservatives. The National Review called it "a spectacularly successful fight to introduce...Western political norms in the region." The Reagan administration's covert support of death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala and the illegal funding of counterrevolutionary in Nicaragua by "the Enterprise" held back the red tide of the 1980s. Hundreds of thousands died or were 'disappeared' never to be seen again. Thousands were tortured and thousands fled the conflicts into exile. This bloody legacy did not stop Darth Cheney from claiming during his 2004 campaign that impoverished, crime ridden El Salvador was an example of what he hoped America would accomplish in Iraq. If nothing else, the members of Bush & Co have a talent for unintended irony.

The proposal to 're-Baathify' Iraq is another stark admission that introducing American democracy at the point of a gun does not work. Neocon wonks, desperate to cobble a semi functioning state from civil chaos, seem satisfied with an Iraqi version of a banana republic. Clearly, freedom in Iraq has marched irretrievably over the horizon. But Ortega's election triumph despite the determination and overwhelming resources of a militaristic superpower does not foretell a tolerable outcome in Iraq for the Bush regime.