trb@drux3.UUCP (09/07/83)
WHY NOT CUBA?
Will El Salvador become another Vietnam? Does the Reagan
Administration's stance regarding Nicaragua merit support?
What does the Kissinger appointment signal? If El Salvador
falls, will the rest of Central America and Mexico go with
it? These and many other questions continue to come. While
the answers to all are not easily found, I can provide some
perspectives that might help to clarify a situation that I
feel is deliberately confused.
One key to what is happening is to know what is not being
done. President Reagan recently spoke eloquently about
preventing the Communists from achieving their designs on El
Salvador. Along the way he severely castigated Cuba and the
Soviet Union for their support of the Sandinistas in
Nicaragua, who continue to fuel the drive against El
Salvador. But his proposals carried no call for anything to
be done about either Cuba or the Soviet Union. Does anyone
seriously believe that Communism will be defeated or even
contained in Central America without doing something about
its primary source in Cuba?
Someone once observed that there seems to be an unwritten
law regarding the steady growth of Communist power. It is:
"What's Red stays Red; what is not is a battleground!" Has
anyone ever heard of an anti-Communist liberation front?
Have US troops ever been used to defeat Communist forces
(that's defeat, not just fight with no intention of defeat)?
The Reagan Administration is currently making much of its
desire to sponsor covert action against the Sandinistas in
Nicaragua. But a likely beneficiary of this action, if it
amounts to anything, will be former Sandinista leader Eden
Pastora who boasts of his Marxism but who has had a
falling-out with his former comrades.
As to what seems to be happening in El Salvador, I offer the
following surmise. In his July 18 speech, after he had
roundly condemned Communist activity in Central America, the
President praised El Salvador for its successful election in
1982. But in the same speech, he also praised that nation
for implementing a massive land reform program. What he
failed to mention is that the winner of that 1982 election
did all in his power to put an end to the Communist-style
land reform program promoted by the United States and that
this same elected leader has been blocked at every turn by
the US Government. So effective has Washington's pressure
been against this anti-Communist choice of the Salvadoran
people that US-backed new elections are already scheduled
for later this year.
What does seem to emerge from the shadows is that both the
US and the Cuban-backed Communists in Central America might
be satisfied should a non-Communist socialist come to power.
If anyone can find a better explanation for all of this
strange behavior, they will find me a ready listener (and
I'm sure I'll hear many, too.)
Further, the appointment of Henry Kissinger to lead a
Commission on Central America says more about the Reagan
Administration than it does about either Central America or
Henry Kissinger. Are we supposed to forget this man's role
in turning over Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to Communists?
Has his role in betraying Angola and Rhodesia been swept
down some memory hole? The potential for more mischief here
is frightening to say the least.
The key to understanding what is happening in Central
America may well be the Administration's attitude toward
Cuba. Any serious attempt to fight Communist growth
effectively anywhere in Latin America without doing
something about Castro's Cuba has to be phony. In the
absence of anti-Cuba activity, what is really happening can
only be disastrous.
Tom Buckley