812 Chapter 30 Running on Empty, 1975–1991
Anastasio Somoza. Because the victorious Sandinista
government was supported by both Cuba and the
Soviet Union, Reagan was determined to force it from
power. He backed anti-Sandinista elements in Nicaragua
known as the Contras and in 1981 persuaded Congress
to provide these “freedom fighters” with arms.
But the Contras made little progress, and many
Americans feared that aiding them would lead, as it
had in Vietnam, to the use of American troops in the
fighting. In October 1984 Congress banned further
military aid to the Contra rebels. Reagan then sought
to persuade other countries and private American
groups to help the Contras (as he put it) keep “body
and soul together.”
Marine Colonel Oliver North, an aide of Reagan’s
national security adviser, devised a scheme to indirectly
funnel federal money to the Contras. He inflated the
price of U.S. weapons, sold them to Iran^1 , and secretly
transferred the profits to the Contras. This plainly vio-
lated the congressional ban on such aid.
When North’s stratagem came to light in
November 1986, he was fired from his job with the
security council. Reagan insisted that he knew noth-
ing about the aid to the Contras. Critics pointed out
that if he was telling the truth it was almost as bad
since that meant that he had not been able to control
his own administration.
Meanwhile, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
in 1980 enraged Charles Wilson, a Democratic con-
gressman from Texas. (Wilson, a womanizer, heavy
drinker, and alleged cocaine-user, was played by
Tom Hanks in the movie, Charlie Wilson’s War
[2007]). Wilson persuaded his colleagues to allo-
cate money for the mujahideen, Muslim warriors
who were trying to drive the Soviets out of their
country. Within several years the Afghan tribes,
especially Islamist radicals known as the Taliban,
were covertly receiving hundreds of millions of dol-
lars in weapons. Stinger missiles, which could be
moved on mules, proved especially effective at
shooting down Soviet helicopters. Provisioned with
American weapons, Muslim insurgents ambushedMujahideen in Afghanistan stand on top of a Soviet helicopter they shot down with U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles in the early 1980s.
(^1) Earlier in the Iran-Iraq war, when Iran appeared on the verge of
defeating Iraq, Reagan had provided $500 million a year in credits
to allow Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to buy armaments. If either Iran or
Iraq won decisively, it could control the flow of Middle Eastern oil.
The United States therefore preferred a stalemate.