orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER) (10/24/85)
> > More reading could include the State Department's report entitled > "The Sandinistas and Middle Eastern Radicals" issued in September. > This paper charges that the Sandinistas have been closely connected > with Libya, Iran and the PLO for more than 15 years. The report > also accuses Nicaragua's government of providing financial help and > safe haven for terrorists. Forming an opinion of a person or a > country's government without taking into consideration the people > and/or organizations they seem to support should result in an opinion > that is without an adequate foundation. Defending a government that > supports organizations that murder Americans is, of course, a matter > of choice. Any government or organization which supports terrorism and the murder of civilians is unequivocally wrong, whether that organization or government is on the right or the left. If one is going to be consistent in imposing this standard then one has to ask why our own government supports the current terrorist group in Nicaragua which has killed or injured thousands of Nicaraguans. We might also ask how our own government can support the bombing of civilians currently taking place in El Salvador. One can ask why the murder of four American nuns in El Salvador did not attract the headlines for weeks that the murder of one American tourist by groups our government opposes did. One can ask how our government can continue to recognize a government which is currently and openly launching incursions against its neighbors and several months ago blew up an American oil facility. (namely South Africa) Personally I am skeptical about the Reagan Administration's attempts to link the Sandinistas with the despised Ayatollah Khomeini. It is possible there is a link but extremely unlikely that Iran can afford to give Nicaragua military support when it has its own bloody and terrible war on its hands. It is likely that such smears have the same validity as Falwell's and others claims that the African National Congress was communist-inspired from its beginning when in fact the ANC began some years before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Such accusations remind me of accusations that Martin Luther King and the whole Civil Rights Movement were "communist". On the other hand those who advocate peace and nonviolent solutions must also express their opposition to the current killings by Salvadoran guerillas and the State of Emergency recently declared by Daniel Ortega. Nicaragua was moving towards an accommodation with the non-terrorist political opposition. The State of Emergency is a gigantic step backwards which only gives Reagan the perfect excuse to invade Nicaragua. Terrorism and violence should be unequivocally opposed - on ALL sides. To do otherwise is to be a hypocrite. tim sevener whuxn!orb