When I turned my TV on recently, Senator McCain (R-AZ) was remarking ". . . and so we must go to the aid of the people being killed in Ukraine." For an instant I thought he might be talking about going to the aid of my friends in eastern Ukraine. Then I realized he was fearing for the lives of the soldiers serving in the army of our puppet Ukrainian government - and proposing we send troops to aid them.
Until recently I had considered our most reprehensible war to be the ten-year war fought using US mercenaries in Nicaragua. Our "freedom fighters," (so-called by the New York Times ) lay waste the countryside and destroyed its infrastructure. Nicaragua has never recovered. It is still the poorest country in our hemisphere.
During the 1980's an estimated 40,000 Americans, in groups sponsored by churches and unions, visited Nicaragua and carried the truth about our"freedom fighters" home to Congress -- which eventually cut off their funding. This was possible because we were not officially at war with Nicaragua and the Nicaraguans were only to happy to issue us visas. This kind of direct citizen action is no longer feasible in our complicated 21 st Century.
Robert Parry was one of the few American journalists to write the truth about the Nicaraguan war. He was roundly criticized for his reporting then, but was later found to be perfectly correct by such official sources as Laurence Walsh's Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/ContraMatters (December 3, 1993).
This is natural. They have only what they hear or read in official and mainstream sources to go on. Not all of us remember Robert Parry's track record for "truth telling" in the 1980's. Very few Americans even know that his writings on Ukraine can be found on OpEdNews.
More Americans should be made aware of Parry and other writers who have proven their impartiality as credible sources of information on foreign affairs.
In addition to OpEdNews, we need a major independent, international media arm dedicated to telling the truth about global politics. This could help usexert more pressure on our Congress (and help the people of other countries exert pressure on their decision makers) protesting invasions and wars assolutions to troubled relationships among countries. This kind of pressurewas useful in ending the Nicaraguan war and might help prevent even more disastrous wars in the future.
What more respected, credible and independent media arm can be imagined than one formed and sponsored by the "Elders?" The goal of theElders is to promote peace. Telling the truth about the political dynamicsof threatening wars would be a means of promoting peace open only to an independent international organization of the Elders' stature.
In 1988, Neal Herrick co-produced, with Pat Burns, the award-wining TV documentary Voices from Nicaragua.
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