Remembering Ford as personally decent but incompetent, with a foreign policy that killed innocents -- a lot like Reagan
William Chirolas -- World News Trust
Dec. 30, 2006 -- A conservative agenda is a given with a conservative president, and Gerald Ford’s domestic policy, like Ronald Reagan’s, involved vetoing social spending bills, and cutting food stamps, housing and education programs -- with Ford infamously denying aid to New York City -- all the while increasing Pentagon spending.
But Ford was special in his proposing the nation’s first official secrets act to provide criminal penalties for the unauthorized disclosure of classified material, which started us on the path that has now led to the president being able, under the new MCA Act, to jail anyone he wants without cause or judicial review.
Ford’s foreign policy (with his chief of staff Cheney, Defense Sec. Rumsfeld, and CIA Director H. W. Bush) was an endorsement of the war criminal (per the EU Courts) Henry Kissinger’s foreign policy that endorsed murders by dictators that would allow our corporations to make money in their countries, the supporting of Pinochet in Chile by keeping aid flowing, and, during the Dec. 6, 1975, trip with Kissinger to Jakarta to meet with dictator Suharto, giving Suharto the green light to invade East Timor and the subsequent murder of 200,000 innocents (a declassified State Department cable states Suharto said to Ford and Kissinger: “We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action.” And Ford: “We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem you have and the intentions you have.” With Kissinger: “We understand your problem and the need to move quickly, but I am only saying that it would be better if it were done after we returned.” -– with the invasion launched a few hours after Ford returned to the United States). Perhaps not as bad as Reagan and the neo-cons (who Bush followed into Iraq) giving protection of Nicaragua’s nun and children murdering former Somozan-era National Guardsmen, landowners and businessmen in an attempt to recover from the 1980 death of corporate America’s friend Somoza and to reverse the 84 election, observed and approved by all the nations of the West except ours, that had resulted in a 63 percent of the vote on a turnout of 74 percent that was in favor of continued Sandinista rule, but bad enough.
Today the media seems to have forgotten that Ford, a year before the pardon of Nixon, said of such a pardon, “I do not think the public would stand for it” and ten days before the actual pardon Ford said that the special prosecutor should proceed against “any and all individuals.” Today we are told that the pardon was a good idea because a criminal trial and imprisonment would have kept the old wounds of Watergate open. But none in the media dare discuss how a pardon that short-circuited prosecution meant that there was no longer a check on future dishonest power grabbing occupants of the Oval Office. Indeed our media response to the Bush/Cheney lying us into war is no long uproar, perhaps because Ford showed there is no political cost to a pardon that ends an uproar.
I wonder if Ford appreciated the irony of Saddam being hung for an act known to Reagan and the current neo-cons 15 months before they sent Rumsfeld over to Iraq in December 83 to shake Saddam’s hand in that famous photo taken as he promised chemical, biological, and other weapons to Iraq.
***
William Chirolas brings 40 years of real-world business experience in local, state, national, and international tax, pensions, and finance to the world of blogging. A graduate of MIT, he calls the Boston area home, except when visiting kids and grandkids. He can be reached at: \n This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
