Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: $Revision: 1.6.2.16 $; site ISM780B.UUCP Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!qantel!lll-crg!ucdavis!ucbvax!decvax!cca!ISM780B!jim From: jim@ISM780B.UUCP Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Re: Orphaned Response (US aid to San Message-ID: <39000036@ISM780B.UUCP> Date: Sat, 30-Nov-85 08:08:00 EST Article-I.D.: ISM780B.39000036 Posted: Sat Nov 30 08:08:00 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 3-Dec-85 20:50:14 EST References: <673@spar.UUCP> Lines: 166 Nf-ID: #R:spar:-67300:ISM780B:39000036:000:9405 Nf-From: ISM780B!jim Nov 30 08:08:00 1985 >/* Written 6:25 pm Nov 28, 1985 by janw@inmet in ISM780B:net.politics */ >[baba@spar] >>> Having sold the Nicaraguan people down the river with its aid to >>> the Sandinistas, the US has an OBLIGATION to at least match that >>> with aid to the resistance. > >>I hope someone has some verifiable figures handy. The Carter ad- >>ministration committed a few million to the Sandinista regime >>shortly after they took power ... > >I hope so too. More than $100 million is the figure I recall. >And then there was international aid endorsed by USA. Here are some facts from "Counterrevolution in Nicaragua: the U.S. Connection" in _The Nicaragua Reader_ by Peter Rosset and John Vandermeer, Grove Press, 1983: In later 1979 and early 1980, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs held hearings on Carter's plan to give Nicaragua $75 million in postwar aid, with the main arguments against coming from Dr. Cleto Di Giovanni, a former CIA operative who later wrote the "Di Giovanni" or "Heritage Foundation Report" which is widely viewed as the original blueprint for Reagan administration policy toward Nicaragua. But the pro arguments from Viron Vaky, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, and AID (Agency for International Development), won out. The package consisted of $70 million in long-term, low-interest loans, and a $5 million grant. The AID director for Nicaragua testified that 60%, or about $45 million, would be "made available to private sector enterprises for the purposes of importing equipment, raw materials, farm machinery, and so forth from the United States"--that is, as export subsidies to U.S. companies. The remaining loan money would be channeled by the Central Bank "into various construction and agricultural projects throughout the country". The $5 million grant provided scholarships, technical and financial assistance to family cooperatives, a grant to the Social Action Committee of the Moravian Church for assistance to the Miskitu Indians, and similar programs to build up groups friendly to the U.S. The final part of the AID package was a "publicity campaign": "Extensive publicity will be given to the program loan and the activities it will finance. In addition to television, radio, and press coverage of the basic loan agreement, there will be similar coverage of sus-assignment signings. Forms and contracts used in the various programs will identify the U.S. government as the source of the funds. Signs will be placed at all construction activities identifying the project as U.S.-financed. And plaques will be affixed to public buildings (e.g., the agricultural school)." The new $7.5 million Nicaraguan Recovery Program II grant planned for FY1981 was designed to "strengthen private sector organizations by funding technical assistance to the confederation of business associations (COSEP) and its member organizations, lending capital to the independent cooperative associations (FUNDE), assisting Red Cross and church community development projects, supporting independent labor unions through the AIFLD, reinforcing the Central American Business School (INCAE), and funding U.S. professional exchange activities (LASPAU) ...". While the Reagan administration suspended assistance to Nicaragua several days after assuming office, he spared the grant program. The AID grant money was distributed out of the U.S. embassy in Managua. The Nicaraguan government stopped it in late 1982 because of the uses to which it was being put; many of the organizations receiving these funds had been implicated by the Nicaraguan government in plots against the government. >>At the time that the aid was offered, there were still significant democratic >>and nationalist factions within the Sandinista directorate. Offering aid >>in an attempt to strengthen their position was both morally and realistically >>a reasonable thing to do. I fail to see how doing so "sold the Nicaraguan >>people down the river", when the Sandinistas were already in power and >>indeed were at the peak of their popularity. > >I have no doubt it was an honest mistake. Therefore, "sold down >the river" is a harsh expression. This was a one-liner in >response to some flaming rhetoric, not a dissertation. Thanks for moderating your previous statement, but I don't find your excuses very convincing. The "flaming rhetoric" to which you responded was The main question that we should really be concerned with is, does the U.S. have the right to destroy the government and the people of the sovereign nation of Nicaragua? It is hard for me to see how following the current policy can avoid leading to a protracted and bloody war, and great loss of life and economic base in the long run. You may see it, but I do not. I do not consider my statement "flaming rhetoric" (certainly some of my statements are, but not the one you responded to). I do not consider the "sold down the river" comment a justifiable response, aside from its lack of basis in fact. >However, >if it *was* a mistake that strengthened, not the democratic fac- >tions, but the totalitarian core, and gave a push down the slip- >pery slope of totalitarianism,- *if* this opinion of mine is true >- the moral obligation is there. Even *if* your opinion is true, the moral obligation is not there unless a) violent attacks on sovereign nations are ever justified b) the Contras represent the forces of democracy c) there are not peaceful methods of achieving a non-totalitarian regime. So, aside from the fact that your opinion about current totalitarianism appears to me to be ungrounded in fact and the notion that we helped the Sandinistas down such a road appears unsupported, I have seen no support of (a), (b), or (c). What I would like to know is, if your opinion does not come from facts (you were not able to quote any to support it), where *does* it come from? Perhaps you would be interested in what Jeane Kirkpatrick had to say about violent attacks against other nations. The following is from her speech before the United Nations Security Council on March 25, 1982: "In his letter requesting this meeting, the Coordinator of the Nicaraguan government, Mr. Daniel Ortega Saavedra, made some extraordinary charges against the government of the United States. We naturally desire to respond to the grave charges that Mr. Ortega has leveled against our policies and our intentions and to comment on the state of relations between our two countries. He spoke of the interventionist strategy of the government of the United States and of statements and concrete actions that clearly evidence an intention to attack Nicaragua and to intervene directly in El Salvador. The attack made by Nicaragua on the United States is not haphazard, the charges made by the government of Nicaragua are not random. The government of Nicaragua has accused the United States of the kinds of political behavior of which it itself is guilty--large scale interventions in the internal affairs of its neighbors, persistent efforts to subvert and overthrow by force and violence the governments of neighboring states, aggressive actions which disrupt the normal conduct of international relations in the region--acts and intentions inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations. These charges--as extravagant as they are baseless--are an interesting example of projection, a psychological operation in which one's own feelings and intentions are simultaneously denied and attributed--that is, projected on--to someone else. Hostility is the dominant emotion and projection the key mechanism of the paranoid style of politics, a style which, much to our regret, has characterized the political behavior of the Sandinista leadership since its arrival in power. The principal object of Sandinista hostility, I further regret, is the government of the people of the United States." Remember that this was while U.S. aid to the Contras was still covert. Can you find anything critical to say about Kirkpatrick's statement, or current U.S. policy in light of it? >>People of a Manichean bent will doubtless take this as an endorsement of >>the Sandinista regime. They will be mistaken. > >I hope you don't mean me. I detest Manichaeanism. I see much good >not just in nice pink moderates like you but often in the most >flaming reds. In fact, my maternal grandfather was a close col- >laborator of Lenin and among the 20 men who voted to make the >disastrous Revolution. He was a decent guy, and I can prove it. >So was (I think) Albert Speer, a close collaborator of Hitler. >Human affairs are complex. > Still, some *systems* are much worse than others. None of us *wants* to be Manichean, but in some areas we are nonetheless. You don't seem to be nearly as Manichean as Frank or Olson or Wheeler or Hill, but you appear to have blind spots. Just the monolithic way you categorize governments as single systems rather than sets of interacting systems seems as Manichean as Marx or Kirkpatrick ("slippery slope of totalitarianism"? or is that Richard Pipes' rhetoric?) to me. Could you please say something non-Manichean about about the Sandinistas, both individually and collectively, the Contras, Ronald Reagan, and the Committee on the Current Danger? -- Jim Balter (ima!jim)