Lileks Off The Deep End

Lileks' "bleat" today (scroll down) is an attack on John Kerry for being "pro-Sandinista," and for apparently having had a conversation with Marlon Brando about the Contras. I'm pretty sure that Lileks is a Bush supporter, so I have a simple question for him: does he really want to make the Iran-contra scandal an issue in this election? Because, as Matt Welch notes, President Bush has disgracefully reappointed Iran-contra crooks to positions of prominence within the American foreign policy apparatus. And also because John Kerry's principal achievement as a US Senator was to reveal the depth of corruption and criminality of Reagan foreign policy machinery, namely its deliberate subversion of Congress's express legislation, its money laundering on a vast international scale, its covert diplomacy with the Ayatollah, its involvement in drug-trafficking, etc. (you know I could go on with this for some time).

If Iran-contra were to become an issue again, the connection between Republican high crimes and misdemeanors in a previous administration and the current administration would be more than metaphorical---by virture of the fact that the same criminals are involved all over again. Is this the distinction between the two campaigns that Lileks really wants to highlight?

Apparently, yes. Lileks' two main points of contention against Kerry seem to be, first, that

Kerry tells Hainey that he had a telephone relationship with Marlon Brando in 1985 and 1986, during the contras: "He took a huge interest in it. And he would call me. He was always asking questions. And he'd give me advice. I took his advice on a couple of angles. A couple of points."

But Lileks doesn't have the slightest clue about precisely what advice Brando gave Kerry, nor will he be able to point to a single example of Brando influencing Kerry for the worse. But why should I restrict myself to a defensive posture? Lileks is complaining about Kerry consulting an actor, for no other reason than that Brando was an actor?!! During the Reagan administration?!! Reagan, who laid wreaths at the graves of the Waffen SS at Bitburg? Reagan, who had delusions of having fought in WWII on movie sets in Los Angeles? Give me a fucking break. And by the way, James, it's "Bonzo," not "Gonzo." If you're going to mock the people who mock your hero---and that, I know, is the ultra ironic-hip thing you do so well---at least get the fucking names right.

Lileks' second charge against Kerry is that he met with Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista leader, which obviously makes Kerry an all-around pro-Communist bad guy, since supporting the contras was such a great idea---an idea so good, in fact, that the crimes committed while doing so ought to be forgiven. Is this a joke? Is Lileks' position on diplomacy that we should only talk to leaders who support democracy, human rights, and capitalism? Or more likely, is Lileks' position that when Republicans conduct diplomacy with dictators (Nixon & Mao, Reagan & Khomeini---how's that for a mix of left and right), it's because they're gritty realists who understand the way the world works and have a practical commitment to keeping our people safe that goes beyond empty leftist platitudes; whereas when Democrats conduct diplomacy with similar sorts of people (not, incidentally, that Ortega could hold a candle to Nixon's or Reagan's third-world buddies), it's because they're either air-headed idealists or else proto-Communists. I'll let Matt Welch have the last word:

Does Anyone Else Remember Opposing Illegal Aid to the Contras While Not Loving the Sandinistas? That seems like a common (and reasonable) enough stance in my memory, but everywhere I stumble across the topic these days, they make it seem like it was an Ortega love-fest there in the mid-'80s. That's certainly not how we ran it in my admittedly narrow neck of the woods. It was Sandinista, not Sandinistas, and no amount of middle-aged I-was-wrongism should ever rehabilitate daffy crooks like Oliver North, or all those other Republican hacks who were punished for mocking the Rule of Law by landing key jobs in the Bush Administration.