The Cuban Threat
Page, Joseph A.
our children inside these Muslim countries -- Fazlur Rahman's suggestions seem almost as irrelevant as .Edward Mortimer's assurances. In the end, both the totally noncommittal attitude of...
...The challenge posed by the Cuban and Russian presence in Central America underlies the urgent calls by both the Reagan administration and the Kissinger Commission for increased U.S...
...Products of secular education, he warned, murder their mothers and fathers, refuse to get up on time for early morning prayers, and grow up to be the sorts of intellectuals who object to the wastage of tons of sacrificial meat bulldozed under the sand each Eid in Makkah (Saudi Arabia...
...A majority of the commissioners would condition military help to El Salvador upon improvements in the human-fights performance of its government...
...O.F.M...
...In the end, both the totally noncommittal attitude of Edward Mortimer and the total commitment of Fazlur Rahman leave me deeply dissatisfied...
...If, when Fazlur Rahman condemns secularism in our daily lives and in the education of our young people, he is condemning a moral relativism amounting to amorality, then I am with him and against secularism...
...military involvement in the region...
...As I sit wondering whether my children will turn out to be matricides, patricides, early morning prayer-shirkers, or, heaven forbid, that sort of intellectual, I read in the newspaper that this year, for the first time, sacrificial meat was airlifted out of Saudi Arabia and distributed to poor Muslims, including the Afghan refugees...
...Both Inevitable Revolutions, a study of how the United States has shaped the history of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, and The Cuban Threat, which assesses the actual challenge posed by Fidel Castro's regime to the interests of its neighbor to the north, provide essential background Commonweal: 218 for the current debate over the report of the Kissinger Commission...
...The document absorbed withering criticism from the press (even the Wall Street Journal riddled it) and failed to marshal either congressional or internaINEVITABLE REVOLUTIONS THE UNITEB STATES IN CENTRAL AMERICA Walter LaFeber Norton, $18.95, 357 pp...
...The report of the Kissinger Commission adopts the view that the roots of the crisis are both domestic and foreign, the former stemming from social and economic conditions, the latter attributable to Cuban and Soviet interference...
...Joseph A. Page tional support...
...SIUI)IES Cheryl Exum Philip King I)avid Nciman Pheme Perkins Susan Praeder Anthony Saldarini RESOURCES OF THE LARGEST CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY IN THE U.S, CENTER FOR LONERGAN STUDIES CROSS-REGISTRATION AND ACCESS TO THE LIBRARY RESOURCES OF TH E BOSTON TH EOLOG ICA L I NSTITUTE FINANCIAL AID DISTINGUISHED FACULTY For further information contact Anthony ,',~aldarini, Director of Graduate Programs, Department of Theology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02167, (617) 552-388(I 6 April 1984:219...
...THE CUBAN THREAT Carla Anne Robblns McGraw.Hill, $17.95, 351 pp...
...The Cuban Threat, a brilliant and dispassionate analysis of the danger to U.S...
...The relationship which the United States has imposed upon Central America is, in LaFeber's view, one of "neodependency," whereby the interests of the latter have been subordinated to a fear of foreign influence which"distorts economic and political development without [the U.S.] taking direct political control...
...Professor Walter LaFeber, in Inevitable Revolutions, argues that economic and social injustice have always been the causes of unrest in Central America and that, with the exception of democratic Costa Rica, revolutions have become "virtually the only method of transferring power and bringing about needed change...
...Manifestations of this policy form the baleful history of U.S...
...STI;I)IES Acquaints the students with results of re.arch into Biblical literature, history...
...FAC U LTY Mary Boys, S.N.J.M Francis Clooney, S.J...
...The Alliance for Progress sought to pump into Latin America substantial economic aid, conditioned upon good-faith efforts by recipient nations to undertake reforms which would help eliminate the causes of popular discontent...
...Integration of all areas is stressed as a preparation for application of theology to pastoral situations or further study...
...When father-in-law, husband, and son returned from Eid prayers, they summarized the day's sermon for me...
...I am afraid that I am an incurable pessimist...
...I can't help but wonder: what does the future hold for the Muslim world in 1984...
...The United States has consistently opposed efforts to bring about radical reform because "it wanted stability, benefited from the on-going system and was therefore content to work with the military-oligarchy complex that ruled most of Central America from the 1820s to the 1980s...
...the CIA-sponsored overthrow of Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz, a reformer whose ideas about land reform upset the United Fruit Company and the local oligarchs...
...I)esigned as a foundation tor work in teaching, preaching, ministry or further study...
...interests posed by Fidel Castro, questions Washington's perception of Cuba's role in Central America, as well as in the rest of Latin America and in Africa...
...I agree that we should raise our children to be deeply in tune with their religious heritage, and that we should encourage some of our brightest young people to study philosophy, religion, classical languages, and history, as well as subjects like engineering and medicine, so that they may contribute constructively to an ongoing debate on the nature of the state in a Muslim society...
...in mid-February of 1981, the State Department issued a White Paper blaming the Soviet Union and Cuba for the insurgency in El Salvador...
...Patricia De Leeuw Johann Baptist Metz Harvey Egan, S.J...
...As the government of El Salvador continued to make little progress in its struggle against Marxist rebels, as United States-backed "contras" operating from Honduras and Costa/Rica attacked the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua and as the military rulers of Guatemala indiscriminately killed peasants suspected of supporting subversives, Central America seemed at the brink of regional warfare...
...despite the region's proximity to the United States, "there are few areas [in the world] about which North Americans are more ignorant...
...The Commission calls for increased military aid from the United States and more than $8 billion in economic assistance over the next five years...
...Yet as LaFeber points out, "Alliance funds in massive amounts went to U.S.-owned firms and to the Central American oligarchs that controlled banks and mercantile businesses, as well as the best tillable land," and the power structures in these countries remained intact...
...Lisa Sowle Cahill Robert J. Daly, S.J, Mary Daly James Michael Weiss Thomas Groome Charles Hefting Thomas Wangler James O'Donohor Fred Lawrence James Hennesey, S.J...
...The Reagan administration was but several weeks old when it made public its interpretation of the violence convulsing Central America...
...and geographical proximity makes Central America an area of legitimate security interest for the United States...
...But it does demonstrate that the prescriptions offered by _9 Kissinger Commission are neither new nor likely to succeed...
...This assertion rested not upon any shred of objective evidence but rather upon the adaptation of reality to a Manichean world view which presently shapes the foreign policy of the United States...
...Indeed, they ought to be required reading for members of Congress who will be deciding whether to implement its policy recommendations...
...Margaret Schatkin Theodore Steeman...
...I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I _9 I I i i i i Books: THE COMBUSTIBLE MIXTURE m O N DECEMBER 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan suggested to a group of visiting high school students that some of the political murders attributable to right-v/,ing death squads in El Salvador might actually have been the work of leftist guerrillas...
...The belief that the Cubans are responsible for the current unrest in Central America, she argues, is exactly the sort of overreaction which has consistently characterized the U.S...
...acceptance of the bloody Salvadoran dictator whose troops slaughtered 30,000 peasants in 1932...
...The administration countered by setting up a bipartisan commission, chaired by Henry Kissinger and charged with recommending both short- and long-term policy for Central America...
...exegesis and theology and ~,ith the methods proper to these apprtmches...
...These include support for the Somoza dynasty, which plundered Nicaragua for over four decades...
...Stephen Brown Ernest Fortin, A.A...
...Nevertheless, the notions that external forces are responsible fc;r unrest in the region and that Cuba, acting under orders from Moscow, is the main source of the problem remained as centerpieces of United States policy toward the region...
...whenever this becomes impossible, the next best approach is to muddle facts...
...Carla Anne Robbins carefully analyzes Castro's initial commitment to armed struggle in Latin America (which turns out to have been much more modest than what Washington feared or what Cuban propaganda claimed) and the conflicts it later engendered with the Soviet Union...
...response to the Cuban revolution...
...This review was written over the Muslim festival of Eid...
...and U.S...
...The preacher had focused on the dangers of giving our children a secular education...
...John McDargh Frans Josef van Beeck, S.J...
...Moreover, American citizens are likely to be as reluctant to dispense billions of tax dollars to propup the status quo in Central America as they . . . . . . . . proved to be over the lifespan of the Alliance for Progress...
...BOSTON COLLEGE MASTERS PROGRAM MA IN THEOLOGY / Trains the student in four areas of theology: Bible, historical and systematic theology, and Christian ethics...
...But the seeds of intolerance which I find even in Fazlur Rahman's vision of an ideological state reinforce my belief in the advisability of the secular state...
...Inevitable Revolutions offers no solutions to the dilemma currently facing the United States in Central America...
...Visiting Professor Fall "84) FACUI.TY IN BIBLICAl...
...Three factors have complicated this process by combining to form what LaFeber terms a "combustible mixture...
...Should I take this as a sign that time is on the side of the intellectual Muslim reformers like Fazlur Rahman, and against both the militant neo-revivalists and the traditional religious establishment...
...interventions -both direct, through the rise of force, and indirect, through the application of diplomati_9 or economic measures...
...MA IN BIBICAI...
...I think that Islamic (like Christian) values should be used to measure artd criticize a government's efforts, or lack of effort, towards building a good and just society...
...The statu~ quo which the United States has always opted to buttress defives from societies ruled for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many, and hence is inherently unstable...
...It would be more convenient for the president to ignore the grisly horrors which have become commonplace in our client states in Central America...
Vol. 111 • April 1984 • No. 7
