poli-sci@ucbvax.ARPA (08/17/85)
From: JoSH <JoSH@RUTGERS.ARPA>
Poli-Sci Digest Thu 15 Aug 85 Volume 5 Number 33
[I will be at IJCAI so sit on those submissions for a week--
any poli-sciers who will be there or thereabouts (it's at UCLA)
I would be pleased to get together--send me mail before Friday
evening (ie tomorrow). --JoSH]
Contents: A-bombs
Nicaragua
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Date: Mon, 12 Aug 85 09:02:06 PDT
From: Richard Foy <foy@AEROSPACE.ARPA>
Subject: Hiroshima
Amongst all of the TV and radio programs on TV there was a lot of discussion
related to the need for using the A-bombs. One historian talked about his
research among the notes and memoranda from the period immediately before
Trinity and Hiroshima. He stated that both Eisenhower and Adnmiral Lehey
had recommended against the use of the A-bombs, that they felt that it was
both too beastly and not necessary. Does anyone have and factual information
related to the validity of these statements and/or opinions about theire
possible accuracy.
richard foy (foy@aerospace)
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Date: Mon, 12 Aug 85 11:34:51 edt
From: Liudvikas Bukys <bukys@rochester.arpa>
To: POLI-SCI@RUTGERS.ARPA
Subject: re: Nicaragua
I have a theory which, I believe, explains the behaviour of our
government toward various other governments. It is simply this:
We are hostile toward governments which we perceive to be expansionist.
(Cuba, Nicaragua, USSR)
We are generally accommodating with those that don't seem expansionist,
whatever their policies on various other fronts.
(China, El Salvador, India, South Africa)
This was the only thing I could think of that would explain all the
sweet nothings muttered during Reagan's last visit to China, arguably
one of the most tyrannical regimes around.
So, Sandinista-lovers, take note. Tell your pals down south that if
they want to be left alone, they should lay off on the "revolution
without borders" stuff for a few years. Of course, it's probably going
to sound rather unconvincing after all this time, but it couldn't
hurt. Maybe if it was accompanied by the abolition of mandatory
attendance at "rallies", political use of rationing, and neighborhood
surveillance by cadre-types, somebody would believe it.
Liudvikas Bukys
bukys@rochester.arpa
rochester!bukys (uucp) via allegra, decvax, seismo
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Date: Mon, 12 Aug 85 08:32:12 PDT
From: Richard Foy <foy@AEROSPACE.ARPA>
Subject: Nicaragua
Steve Upstill questions why we are so concerned about Nicaragua. He was
there and presents information which brings our policies under question.
The main reason that we are concerned is that we have a semantic problem
concerning words like totalitarian, communist, marxist, ditatorship etc.
We tend to lump them all into one connatative basket.
These words really relate to two domains; economic systems is one domain,
political system is the other domain. Both domains have a range of potential
values.
In the economic domain there is a range from totally free enterprise with
no government involvement at all to total government ownership and operation.
In the policial domain there is a range from total democracy where everyone
votes on everything to total dictatorship where one person has absolute
control.
All existant countries are somewhere in between the extremes in both domains.
When we mix up these two domains we tend to support any country which is
ecomomically far removed from communism evan though politically it may be
very totolitain. We tend to work against countries that ecomomically towards
communism evan if they are better than average in political freedoms.
As a comnsequence we drive many nations toward alignment with the USSR
which of course is the champion of communism as we are the champion of
capitalism. In the process we also drive them towards towards greater
totolitarianism.
There are many examples of how we have erred in this direction.
Don't give up hope Steve. The people running the countries of the world are
mere mortal men. Thus they provide challanges for the new generation to
build a better world.
richard foy
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From: rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo)
Subject: Definitive expose' of Sandinistas?
Date: 12 Aug 85 18:46:44 GMT
[I've imported this piece from Usenet in an attempt to answer
Steve Upstill's original question. --JoSH]
**************************
PSEUDO-SANDINISM UNMASKED?
**************************
John Silber, controversial president of Boston University & a member
of the President's National Bipartisan Commission on Central America
(the Kissinger Commission), wrote the following review of Shirley
Christian's NICARAGUA: REVOLUTION IN THE FAMILY, a brand-new study of
revolutionary Nicaragua, and possibly the definitive expose' of Sandi-
nista tyranny and deceit that's been lacking for so long.
Is Silber's review accurate? Is Christian's critique valid? Get a
copy of the book and read it! I am. I'll post synopses when I finish
reading it.
Better well-read than Red,
Ron Rizzo
[ Reprinted in its entirety from Boston Sunday Globe, 8/11/85, pp. A10-11
without permission. ]
DEMYTHOLOGIZING THE SANDINISTAS
===============================
NICARAGUA
Revolution in the Family
By Shirley Christian. Random House.
337 pp. $19.95.
By John R. Silber
It would have been useful if, through some time warp, the
members of the Kissinger Commission had had Shirley Christian's "Nica-
ragua: Revolution in the Family" as we sat in Managua listening to
Nicaragua's foreign minister, Father Miguel D'Escoto, blame the United
States for the sins of the Sandinistas. He was lying, and we told him so.
But Christian's book would have made the refutation definitive and public:
She cuts through mendacity and obfuscation with a powerful combination of
thorough research, eyewitness experience and reportorial savvy.
Christian shows that the history of our involvement in Nicaragua
is not a subject for endless breast-beating but for honest appraisal.
She reminds us that William Walker, the freebooter who took over the
country just before the Civil War, was opposed by major US business
interests and by our government, which refused to receive his ambassador.
She thoroughly demythologizes Augusto Cesar Sandino, whom the Sandinistas
use to give Marxism-Leninism a Nicaraguan accent, pointing out his stubborn
and vociferous anticommunism. Sandino despised communism for its inter-
nationalism, a prescient attitude, considering Nicaragua's present status
as a pawn of the Soviet Union and Cuba.
She also shows that the early presence of the United States was
not mere imperialism, but an attempt to stabilize the country in response
to a genuine threat of foreign influence. Sandino himself, refusing to
lay down his arms because his liberal party was not guaranteed a suffi-
cient share of power, twice offered to come to terms if the US Marines
would remain in Nicaragua and run it until elections were conducted.
By contrast, Christian writes, "The leaders of the Sandinista
Front intended to establish a Leninist system from the moment they
marched into Managua." She clearly shows that long before the revo-
lution, the Sandinistas were Marxist-Leninist in thought and action.
She details the deceits and opportunism by which they alternately
flaunted and obscured their intentions. Anyone who thinks a Marxist-
Leninist regime can be trusted or who finds it hard to conceive of
ostensibly "progressive" rulers committed to deceit, rigid ideology
and the ruthless exploitation of others, should read this book.
Christian limns superbly the attitudes and personalities of
the players, and the locales and ambiance in which they appear. She
has been told or has witnessed some very interesting stories. Reading
her book, one hears clearly the voices of genuine democracy: an earnest,
wounded Arturo Cruz, analyzing his mistaken support of the Sandinistas;
the dignity, courage and sorrow of Violeta Chamorro; the spunk and
intelligence of the market women who continue to defy Sandinista
harassment and brutality; or Adolfo Calero telling Somoza, whom he
opposed, that he had better change fast, because "You're going to
lose your best friends, the gringos. They are going to try and get
your ass."
A "liberation" church service
Christian strikingly juxtaposes the hollow rhetoric of Marxist
adventurers such as the Sandinista secret police chief, Tomas Borge,
with the genuine concern of religious leaders and human-rights activists
forced out of the country. Her protrait of a "liberation" church
service at which, for an audience of foreign visitors, various members
of "the people" perform like trained seals, is devastating. So is her
account of a Sandinista "intellectual seminar" in which participants
explain to each other what Sandino "would have said" if he had only
understood Marxism.
Christian's book is less instructive about the future. There
has been and will be a continuing effort by the Soviet Union and Cuba
to influence the course of events in our hemisphere. This played an
important role in the Nicaraguan revolution and in US perception of
it. Internal politics (the "family" referred to in Christian's sub-
title) played a major role in bringing about the revolution. But the
revolution's consequences will be determined not by the family, but
by the Soviet Union and Cuba, by conditions in Nicaragua and by the
United States.
Christian correctly says that the revolution against Somoza
was not a phenomenon of class struggle. She goes into some detail
on the frustrations of the Sandinistas as they tried to stir up
peasants and agitate the working class. "One of the first priorities
of the Sandinistas," Eden Pastora recently told one of my associates
with tongue in cheek, "is to turn peasants and farmers into proleta-
rians. They will do this," he added more seriously, "by starving
them." The 1979 uprising succeeded because the press, the middle
class and organized labor in Nicaragua deserted Somoza. They were
subsequently used as dupes and front men by the Sandinistas, whose
years of Leninist study finally paid off.
Carter administration faulted
On the issue of US intervention, Christian rightly faults
the Carter administration for trying to have it both ways. When
President Carter appeared before the Kssinger Commission, we asked
him why he had denied support to the democratic forces after the
revolution. His answer was that this would have been intervention.
He was justly proud, however, of his withdrawal of support for Somoza
- an intervention as consequential as that he rejected.
Christian concludes that "The Sandinista Front would have
become a footnote to history had a moderate regime been able to
assume power in Nicaragua before the end of 1978. But the Carter
Administration could not make the decision to do what was necessary
to bring this about." Our failure proved tragic for the Nicaraguan
people: With Somoza stripped of US support, and the democratic
forces weaponless, the triumph of the Marxist-Leninists was inevi-
table.
Although she does mention the Sandinistas' New York public
relations firm, Christian plays down a subject on which she has been
eloquent elsewhere: the role played by the media in romanticizing
the Sandinistas. In a 1982 article on the Washington Jounalism
Review, she demonstrated the extent to whic the press had been
responsible for sweetening the image of the Sandinistas. Neither
the Carter Administration nor the Reagan Administration was under any
such illusions, but some members of Congress were. And congressional
vacillation was a reflection of congressional and public misperception
of the Sandinistas.
The words Christian applied in 1982 to the US media apply
equally well to the public and the Congress: "Intrigued by the
decline and fall of Anastasio Somoza, they could not see the coming
of Tomas Borge."
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End of POLI-SCI Digest
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