Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ucbcad.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!tektronix!ucbcad!notes
From: notes@ucbcad.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Nicaragua - (nf)
Message-ID: <6@ucbcad.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 4-Sep-83 17:52:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.6
Posted: Sun Sep  4 17:52:53 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 5-Sep-83 02:17:15 EDT
Sender: notes@ucbcad.UUCP
Organization: UC Berkeley CAD Group
Lines: 68

#R:hao:-61200:ucbesvax:7500034:000:3463
ucbesvax!turner    Sep  4 04:47:00 1983

The Nicaraguan national anthem is not very complimentary to the "Yankees",
as they are referred to in that song.  That should not be used as evidence
that schoolteachers imported from Cuba are teaching children to hate
Americans, however.

Rather, we should think of how such phrasing worked its way into a
song intended to stir the hearts of patriots.  Could it be that
(no, shudder!) the U.S. actually did something BAD down there?
Could Sandino have led a huge popular rebellion against a U.S.
puppet regime, only to have it crushed by U.S. Marines?  And that
the memory of this slaughter left a bitter taste, and a desire to
be free of foreign domination?  How odd.  Totally inexplicable.

I suppose they should rewrite their national anthem, emphasizing their
love for the misguided Yankee, and how they would like to have as much
IMF development credit as the Phillipines enjoys.

Getting real again (I hope): look what's going on now.  "Free of foreign
domination" is trickling down the drain.  The USSR is dumping its bargain-
basement tanks and SAM's into Nicaragua, while the US is slowly steaming
into local waters, and positioning troops in nearby not-so-friendly Honduras.
I give it till December.  I have a no-longer-so-little brother in the
Marines right now, and I'm frankly worried for him.

The conservative (i.e., administration) line on all this is that they are
*preventing* another Vietnam.  How they plan to do this by retracing their
footsteps right down into the quicksand is a little beyond me.  Of course,
they don't go into the details.  Covert action, y'know.  The CIA?  Hey, we
NEED those guys.

And now Jimmy Carter comes out and "reverses" himself on El Salvador.
He says, now, that he favors the hard line.  Reverses himself!?  He got
us INTO this.  And Haig, recently talking about how the problem down
there is Terrorism (equals Communism).  The White Hand, hacking people up
with machetes--no, no, they're not terrorists.  He means REAL Terrorists.

Some people in this newsgroup are speaking favorably of a Sandinista,
because he came here and sounded reasonable.  Can you (I'm talking
to you conservatives out there in netland) really blame them for wanting
to hear something that sounds like reason, after the miserable flaming on
the part of our national "leaders" on the subject of Nicaragua?  Are you
never embarassed by the pattern of lies, distortion and hysteria that
Reagan and his ideological cohort rely on to persuade the U.S. public of
their position on Central American revolution?

YOU CANNOT "EXPORT" REVOLUTION.  YOU CAN DIVERT IT, SELL IT OUT, CO-OPT
IT, OR DISSOLVE IT IN BLOOD.  BUT YOU CANNOT MAKE IT HAPPEN WHERE THE
NECESSARY CONDITIONS DO NOT EXIST.  PEOPLE DO NOT OFFER THEIR LIVES FOR
ANY CAUSE OTHER THAN WHAT THEY PERCEIVE AS THEIR OWN DIGNITY AND FREEDOM.

El Salvador is not on the "U.S. Mainland".  (Geography lesson here for
Caspar Weinberger.)  It is on the North American mainland.  And I am not
a "Yankee".  I am a U.S. citizen.  Caspar Weinberger, on the other hand,
IS a Yankee.

I am not insulted by the Nicaraguan national anthem, because it does not
refer to me.  You "interventionaries" out there should only be glad that
a devoutly Catholic nation is disinclined to use stronger language in
expressing its national revulsion against decades of bullying.

NOW do you know what "Yankee" means?  National Review will never translate
it for you.

	Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)