Oliver North

What A Difference 35 Years Makes

I have been stewing on this one for a while because I didn't know exactly what it was about Oliver North that really got me agitated.

But I figured it out.

When I was a young teen, the Oliver North trial was televised and he did not disappoint. He was the handsome, charismatic, and defiant face of the Reagan Administration in terms of defending the Iran-Contra Affair. We watched, we cheered, we had shirts that said stuff like Ollie for President.

Day after day, North would answer questions with a self-righteous tone and sarcasm, draping himself in the flag. He was quick-witted and self-assured. A true believer. We viewed him as the ultimate patriot. I was too young to understand what was really at hand. I'm not anymore.

Iran-Contra was a convoluted scandal where the Reagan Administration got caught violating the Boland Amendment in order to support the Contra Rebels in Nicaragua against the Communist Sandanistas while simultaneously arming Iran, despite a weapons embargo signed by Congress. So we were arming Iran, who was in a bloody war with Iraq (who we were arming with chemical weapons) to try and free 7 hostages in Lebanon while simultaneously funding these narco-soldiers in Nicaragua.

So because Reagan and North and everyone else in the administration thought the 7 hostages were more important than our laws, they found a way to secretly do this work and North was the point man/fall guy. Reagan, you may remember, 'did not recall' anything when questioned. And we pretended to believe him or look the other way.

The first of his and their errors: the ends don't always justify the means. Just because we want these 7 hostages back, does not mean that we support the cocaine trade in Central America or the war of a dicatorship in the Middle East. The fallout from such events could have been and may have been far worse than the loss of 7 lives. And we all wanted the hostages back.

The conceit there is that American lives are worth more than other lives. They are not. It is honorable to try and free them. It is dishonorable to violate our laws and our ethics to do so.

One of the reasons that North was so proud of himself was that he was doing this for the 7 hostages. His self-righteousness blinded him to the actual effects of his behaviors. He could have caused the killing of untold innocent life because of the decisions he and they made.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, North was so proud to express again and again how he never disobeyed a direct order from a commanding officer. This sounds great until you consider that not every order is ethical. Not every commanding officer should be obeyed, especially when they offer an order that would cause a soldier to break multiple laws. These laws apply to every citizen. They were passed for good reasons. Reagan and North and all those cronies thought they knew better than the experts and the legislators. They were wrong.

I can relate to wanting to save the hostages and I can relate to the difficulty of choosing between our laws and direct orders from a commanding officer when on active duty in the military. But North disclosed no sense of conflict in following these orders. So I don’t see that as being pertinent here.

Members of Congress and the public were eating out of Ollie's hand. So was I. I was 12. And I didn't know anything. I know some things now. Oliver North was no hero. His arrogant tone and willful violation of our laws was an embarrassment. Lionizing him then and now (on Fox News) is gross.