I'm no podiatrist, but I'm pretty sure she's doin it rong.

"neo-con" wasn't even part of our lexicon when we were really deeply involved in that part of the world.

It kept them busy fighting each other. But to be honest you would really need to go back a little farther in history to be true to the issue as we supported Iran long before Reagan came to office.

The neo-conservative foreign policy ideology started as a post WW II "anti-communist" policy....mostly Democrats at the time. Viet Nam could rightfully be considered the first neo-con foreign policy failure.

In terms of South America, the School of the Americas, where right wing, anti-communist regimes received military training n the US, and used that training to suppress populist movements was another failure.

Reagan's attempt to replace a communist regime in Nicaragua through the illegal Iran/Contra fiasco was when the movement became more of a true Republican ideology. And it failed there as well....1o Reagan officials served jail time for the Iran /Contra affair and the person they removed from office, Daniel Ortega, is now back in power and more popular than ever.

Bush continued the same policy on a lesser scale with his interference in elections in Venezuela resulting in making Hugo Chavez even more popular in his own country and the region.
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And yet, now the top ruling Shiia parties in Iraq all have strong historic ties to Iran...so our invasion and occupation has made Iran stronger in the region.

They have always had strong "historic ties" to Iran. That has not changed. I am not going to dispute the fact that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake or worse. And I have always stated that position.

But neo-con, as it is used today, refers only to those in the Republickin party to whom left-wingers like to associate with 8 years of Bush. And that would be incorrect. But it is how people assoicate the term. Irving Kristol is given most of the credit for the development of the term. Or as a better known description, "A liberal mugged by reality". Given our involvement with Vietnam began before Kennedy was in office you would need to spread that assertion over no less than 4 presidential terms to be accurate. Like our economic situation now, every party gets a piece of that shit sandwhich.

You have made an assumption that that was the purpose of the SOA. I disagree. You would be hard pressed to document the goal of the SOA to be the "suppression of populist movements" from anything other than a partisan anti-SOA source. Lose associations between individuals who attended the SOA and their subsequent criminal actions in their own countries is hardly proof. Criminals will act as such with or without training.

The Ortega issue was a side show to the hostages. A minor issue that got caught up in the larger issue. Not designed by Reagan but by others with alternative motives.

It would not be incorrect to refer to Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfiwicz, Pearl, Fife, etc as hold-over neo-cons from the Reagan era who heavily influenced and controlled Bush's foreign policy at the expense of the less ideological types like Colin Powell and even Condi Rice.

I never said it was the goal. The goal was to assist any anti-communist regimes, no matter how thuggish, to keep communism out of the region....much like Reagan's personal stated goal of supporting the anti-communist Contras.

The outcome was the unintended consequences....the suppression of populist movements and the resulting anti-Americanism.

Much like the Iraq policy...unintended consequences.

But in both cases, the consequences could have been (and were) predicted.