The Vermont
senator once wrote a letter to former President Ronald Reagan,
condemning U.S. support for the Contras in the "strongest
possible terms."
While
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been criticized
for his lack of foreign policy experience compared to his opponent,
former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, research by the
U.S.-based Fusion website has revealed that the senator was
politically and ethically invested in the U.S. government’s
involvement in Latin America during the 1980s, specifically
Nicaragua.
While
serving as the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, for eight years in the
1980s, Sanders wrote a series of letters and official resolutions to
President Jimmy Carter and President Ronald Reagan, addressing U.S.
involvement in the civil war in Nicaragua.
In 1983,
Sanders wrote a letter to Reagan saying: “At a time when your
administration has imposed horrendous cutbacks to the American people
… I am appalled that you are using taxpayers’ money to destroy
the government of a small nation.”
In the
letter, Sanders condemned Reagan’s intervention in Nicaragua in the
“strongest possible terms.”
The letters
and statements form part of an archive labeled "Nicaragua,"
which includes more than 1,000 pages of Sanders' writing on the issue
and can be found in the archives of the University of Vermont,
according to Fusion.
[...]
Furthermore,
in his 1997 book "Outsider in the House," Sanders described
the U.S. war in Nicaragua as “illegal and immoral."
“It was
an outrageous waste of taxpayer money. As a mayor, I wanted more
federal funds for affordable housing and economic development. I did
not want to see taxpayer dollars doing to the CIA for an appalling
war … this was very much a municipal issue," he said.
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