Capitol Ideas/Cowardly Lions

...Their thinking then, as today, was that Savimbi might look all right-he was black and he had on a bush jacket with' button-down shoulder flaps, the kind you stick your guerrilla beret under- but the fact is he was fighting Communists...

...So is there somebody out there who believes in something...

...Instead, it's a grey suit with pleated patch pockets on the jacket to give a hint of the military, the struggle...

...What about freedom itself...

...The press corps and the State Department will still be against him...

...Why aren't American college boys trying to join his fight the way they sought out Castro when he was in the Sierra Maestre...

...With such pusillanimous leadership in the Executive, can anyone blame the Congress for vacillating...

...That's why I rather admire the Shiites, to tell you the truth, because they really do believe in their religion, even if it is rotten to the core, and they are willing to die for it...

...They're in favor of something at one time and then some things can happen and they can change their minds...

...And Chitun-da writes op-ed pieces...

...He is also described as "no friend of the West...

...Marine contingents doing flag-folding duty...

...He spent the better part of a lunch (at the Washington Times) trying to explain State Department policy toward Mozambique-a policy favoring the Communist dictator in that country, Samora Machel...

...and then one day Shultz will rouse himself and Reagan will come in from the ranch and someone will say: We may think these are fuzzy-headed people- and believe me they are fuzzy-headed-but we must face the fact that these Shiites and Druses, Amals and Hezbollahs and Communists too, they really do believe in things (fuzzy-headed things) and so maybe we are going to have to find some people on our side who believe in things too...

...It always amazes me when these guerrillas come in from the jungle and make the Washington rounds like any other lobbyist...

...there have been several attempts on his life...

...How many of us can say the same...

...Pastora was wearing a silvery colored suit when he came into Armey's office...

...I noticed one or two of the leftist journalists present eying him and his capitalist newspaper with grave suspicion, suspecting perhaps that it was South African mining shares he was interested in...

...Meanwhile the Secretary of State is here to tell us that we shouldn't give military aid to the anti-Vietnamese guerrillas in Cambodia because (get this), "Congress is a very changeable operation...

...A collarless shirt evokes the proletariat...

...Shultz should call it quits...

...This contrasts with the Soviet Union, whose policy is to impose nondemocratic socialism...

...The premise of arms control, remember, is that U.S...

...In recent years Allen has been one of the very few journalists who have viewed Washington with a sense of literary detachment rather than ideological commitment...

...It will take a few more ceremonial visits to Andrews Air Force Base...

...a few more batches of coffins unloaded from military transports...

...And maybe Melvin Laird and David Rockefeller and Donald Kendall and Armand Hammer, Reagan's emissary and Lenin's friend, aren't quite up to the job...

...a few more U.S...

...Unlike his aides, he does not wear coat and tie...

...I was my usual pessimistic self and warned him that he would get nowhere in Washington because he was on the wrong side of "the struggle...

...I see that Policy Review calls Comandante Zero, otherwise known as Eden Pastora, a "swashbuckling maverick...

...In 1981 Savimbi came back and had a "private visit" with the Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, but he went away empty-handed...

...But nothing less...

...That could be...

...This was in the Carter years...

...For God, yes...

...Savimbi had at that point been hiding in the Angolan bush for what-fifteen years...

...They know what they want, they want it badly, and they know they are unlikely to be able to get it via democratic politics in the United States...

...And that made him an anti-Communist...

...Dick Armey, who represents the northern suburbs of Dallas, and was first elected last November, had nothing more alarming than a row of Ludwig Von Mises books on the shelf behind his desk...

...Let us not forget that it is the unofficial policy of the State Department to impose democratic socialism wherever it sees the opportunity...

...he is merely the recipient of reports from George Shultz, who is starring in a rerun of the Cowardly Lion...

...What a tragedy that Reagan turned out to be so weak-willed as to turn foreign policy over to people like this-people who do not reflect the country's basic strength...

...But it is still true that anti-Communism is the ultimate gaucherie, and so it doesn't matter how many of the finer points of style he perfects...

...He looked pleasant enough, with the build of a boxer...

...These people are wrong-headed, but at least they know what they want, namely Communism...

...The same can't be said for the true fuzzy heads at the State Department, personified by Wisner, who find it very hard to understand that there really are people in this world who believe in something...

...I can't resist adding Allen's description of Savimbi, which is as good as anything I've read in Washington: He achieves total Third World legitimacy with his clothes...

...I know someone said "Give me liberty or give me death," but still I wonder...

...No doubt Savimbi still pops in to Washington every now and then for a breakfast meeting or two...

...As we all know by now the aid bill passed, and in fact the well-tailored freedom fighter was sitting in the gallery of the House of Representatives as the voting proceeded...

...At some point down the road this is probably going to impress itself upon the wimpish minions at Soggy Bottom...

...At one point I mentioned the Socialist International, and build-a-new-society commie-lovers ensconced in Maputo's rent-controlled high-rise apartments built by the Portuguese...

...Fuzzy-headed...

...aid to Savimbi...

...a few more performances of "taps" on the lone bugle...

...I was about to say Reagan Administration policy but I really don't think that Reagan has anything to do with it...

...I suppose Washington is analogous to Switzerland in World War II on these occasions...

...The commies undoubtedly have a price on Pastora's head...

...I am told that one should not use the word "contra," because it is short for "counterrevolutionary," as though that were a label to be dreaded...

...If we do they might not consent to our security in the strategic arena...

...security is threatened if the Soviets deploy more than a certain number of weapons...

...So why isn't he a cult hero...

...They make the Socialist Internationalists from Europe look like pikers...

...He knew what I meant, and I was right, unfortunately...

...The black zippered boots are modernity...

...Oh, said Wisner, they're just fuzzy-headed idealists...

...His chief aide and I believe "foreign minister," Jeremias Chitunda, was holding a copy of that day's Wall Street Journal...

...Which reminds me, while in England recently I met the itinerant British journalist Richard West, who had just returned from a trip to Nicaragua...

...Why, then, provoke the Soviet wrath needlessly in out-of-the-way places like Angola and Mozambique...

...And the thin black cane he always carries in public is authority...

...Not immediately, of course...

...And not just a balanced budget or five-percent GNP growth or free trade or a downtick in the CPI, because people aren't prepared to die for such things...

...Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...

...It was named after Dick Clark, a left-wing senator from Iowa...

...He told me he could scarcely believe the great gullible flock of American leftists in Managua, including a swarm of ideological "reporters...

...a few more tableaux of sobbing relatives...

...He found the State Department doors closed to him...

...Bechtel Corp., I am sure, would give him a hero's welcome.ive him a hero's welcome...

...This I do believe is the unstated basis of State Department policy in southern Africa...

...The steel-link bracelet is industry...

...And maybe trade concessions and low-interest loans aren't going to work miracles after all...

...And that, if I may say so, is a hopeful sign...

...Which was and is a vile gaucherie-the ultimate in bad taste...

...for country, yes...

...Had he been perusing the stock market pages...

...Thinking that he might be' hungry I tried to press a second helping of pancakes on him but he ate sparingly, even fastidiously...

...A few months ago I met Frank Wisner, the deputy assistant secretary of state for African Affairs...

...He was in town for the House vote on aid to the "contras" in Nicaragua...

...This man got his doctorate in Political Science from Lausanne and his guerrilla warfare training in China, Allen wrote in mock amazement...

...Before that he was Jimmy Carter's ambassador to Zambia...

...You might say that at least Congress has now rescinded the Clark Amendment, which barred U.S...

...All very well and good, but it still didn't get him anywhere...

...This, by the way, does have a certain logic in view of our participation 'in negotiations with the Soviet Union in Geneva...

...The ring bearing a miniature African mask is nationalism and roots...

...It suggests a reluctance on his part to sit quietly in George Shultz's hip pocket, like that ingratiating State Department puppet "Napoleon" (ha ha) Duarte...

...military aid to Savimbi any time soon...

...Yes, but don't expect U.S...

...security is dependent on Soviet consent (since that is what is entailed by "agreements...

...He had been fighting first Portuguese and then Cuban, East German, and Soviet colonials, and here he was having sausage and pancakes at the Mayflower and getting ready to answer hostile questions from the lefty press corps...

...And since the Soviets can only be induced (evidently) to reduce this number by negotiation, it follows inexorably that U.S...

...If we can't get that into our heads and soon, then we don't deserve to survive...

...I actually met the Angolan hero Jonas Savimbi a few years ago at a breakfast meeting in the Mayflower Hotel on Connecticut Avenue...

...Private visit," Henry Allen noted ironically in a terrific piece in the Washington Post "Style" section at the time...

...Savimbi looked terrific...

...It will be resolutely opposed by the State Department whose peculiar policy in southern Africa seems to be calculated above all to minimize Soviet-bloc difficulties in the region...

...Why does he have to move through this murky atmosphere of exile...

...The fat multi-dial watch is science...

...I have never heard anything more muddled and confused than this explanation which contrives to put Reagan on the same side as Fidel Castro and Ted Weiss, the communistic congressman from Manhattan...

...The difference today, as one is now all too uncomfortably aware with Reagan, is really one of rhetoric rather than action...

...He was an economics professor and I think he actually reads the books...

...Here we are in 1985 and he's still lurking in the bush, his country crawling with cadres from every Communist nation...

...I would demur only to the extent of saying that a good many of these horrors are not gullible...