US-Nicaragua relations are certainly different now than they were in 1979 after the Sandinistas sent Somoza packing; and Iran may be a boogey man, but the Soviet Union it ain’t.

It strikes me as bad foreign policy on our part to create conditions favorable to the formation of positive relations between known sponsors of the Middle Eastern style of terrorism and any nation in the western hemisphere. Certainly terror has a long history here (and since we’re talking about Nicaragua the Sandinistas are a great example). Personally I think the Tupamaros might have been the most innovative group in history (given historic context) in terms of urban terror; they knew how to take punches at the powerful, and they were darn good at it.

Latin American terror, though, has typically stayed in Latin America, party (I think) because of its nature, and partly (I think) because of US intervention. All those superpower fights, like Nicaragua, were horrible for Latin America but they did keep the Soviets out, at least ostensibly.

I guess this is some of the aftermath of those proxy wars - like Somalia, like Afghanistan. . .

A very smart military science professor of mine once told me that the amount of time it takes to clean up the mess after a war is an exponential function of the length of the war. The cold war lasted what, the better part of fifty years?

I guess we’re gonna be mopping floors for a long time.