Oliver North is back. It is surprising it didn’t happen earlier. In light of what is happening internationally and in Washington DC, North’s re-emergence on the public stage seems almost inevitably appropriate.
North was picked as president of the National Rifle Association at its Dallas convention earlier this month. His selection came at a conclave that featured speeches by both Donald Trump and American vice president Mike Pence, who continue to join most of their Republican colleagues in their obeisance to the NRA, an organisation claiming around six million members. That represents a little under five percent of the number of people who voted in the 2016 American presidential election, but the NRA exerts extraordinary influence.
But who is Oliver North? Those with long memories will recall him as perhaps the single most significant unelected official during the eight-year presidency of Ronald Reagan. North grew up in upstate New York, graduated from the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, and joined the Marines. He enjoyed a successful career there, including some combat decorations from service in Vietnam.
But the turning point for North came in 1981, when he was assigned to a plum position as one of the many military liaison officers on the staff of the National Security Council in the White House.
In such a setting, North stood out. Without question a dedicated patriot and tireless worker, he prided himself on his problem-solving skills. When the Reagan administration found itself frustrated by Congress in some of its major foreign policy endeavours, North found a way to demonstrate that two wrongs can make a right for some (including North) and that those same two wrongs can also nearly bring down a phenomenally popular president.
North came to be credited with the scheme that turned into the Iran-Contra affair. And that brought Reagan his greatest presidential crisis.
As North became more prominent behind the scenes at the NSC, the US, then as now, found itself increasingly vexed by the rigid theocrats who ruled Iran after overthrowing the US-backed Shah in 1979, when the US Embassy in Tehran was overrun and held by rebels for 444 days until, literally, the day of Reagan’s inauguration. Then as now, the American government chose to destabilize the Iranian government with economic sanctions, and seized some of their assets held in American financial institutions. An arms embargo was then in force against using any seized Iranian financial assets to purchase weapons.
As a result, money was available to the administration that had not been appropriated by Congress. Meantime, that same Congress had passed legislation forbidding the use of appropriated funds to support a US-backed insurgency in Nicaragua against the then-new government of the Sandinistas and left-wing President Daniel Ortega. Ortega, the Nicaraguan guerilla leader and his nation’s president both now and in the 1980s, would have qualified for the title of the Western hemisphere’s leading thorn in the American side but for the tenure of his ideological and political ally Fidel Castro.
North masterminded the scheme to take Iranian seized money to skirt the congressional ban to buy arms for the Nicaraguan rebels. When the plot was revealed, North was indicted on 16 criminal counts and convicted of some, though he was ultimately exonerated on appeal. In 1987, North admitted he had misled the Congress, but “I did so with a purpose. I thought using the Ayatollah’s money to support Nicaraguan freedom fighters was a good idea. I still do,” he said.
After an appeals court cleared him, North ran for the Senate as a Republican in Virginia and nearly toppled popular Chuck Robb, himself an ex-Marine who had married Lyndon Johnson’s daughter. Though not as visible in recent years, 74-year-old North has been a Fox commentator and has generally aligned himself with right wing causes. Now he takes the helm at the NRA.
“In a way, North is the perfect NRA president for the Trump era,” said the director of a documentary on the Robb-North Senate election.
“North is not only unapologetically angry and defiant, but he was conducting international foreign policy in the shadowy netherworld before anybody even heard of the word ‘collusion’.”
He is indeed perfect for the NRA in the era of Trump.
Comments
sealice 5 years, 10 months ago
big gang of fools needs a proven crook to lead them.... not the PLP republicans in the US......
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