Editorials
COMMONWEAL Engulfed Over twenty-five thousand U.S. military personnel and thirty U.S. ships are scheduled to be in or near the Persian Gulf this week. Yet, during one of the largest U.S. military...
...In what Theodore Draper calls "one of the most extraordinary feats of modern diplomacy," (New York Review of Books, July 16) tiny Kuwait orchestrated the intervention of both superpowers in the Iran-Iraq war, playing one off against the other...
...A LEAN CHAIN OF HOPE Pablo Neruda once described Central America as ' 'a rosary of misery that shapes the waste of the Americas," a "gathering place for the tears of two oceans...
...This is not 1984, and currently the Iranians are fired up in a war of words with the Saudis over the 400 killed during the Mecca riots...
...What do they recommend...
...The terms of the Arias agreement are not ironclad...
...Perhaps the flimsiest excuse offered for our involvement has been that the U.S...
...but seldom do we sense a self-preserving awareness of how corrosive even justifiable anger can be...
...They created a commission to verify compliance with the accord...
...has suggested mining Iran's harbors as one part of a more encompassing policy (which includes the smart suggestion that we aid the building of pipelines to take away Iran's advantage of controlling the strait...
...But before we fight mines with mines, or capitulate to Aspin's neat version of the alternatives facing us— "clear out," "retaliate," or "stand there" — we need to consider carefully what our purposes are, what we are actually willing to risk, and for how long...
...presence endangered navigation more than it has helped, at least as far as mine damage to Kuwaiti vessels is concerned...
...The popularity of Mr...
...We hope so...
...Take, for example, the "reason" stated last March when the U.S...
...Instead, we agreed to reflag eleven/ships, which escalated immediately into the silly escorting service that backfired with the first mine blast...
...Abraham Lowenthal has pointed out in these pages [May 8] that as a result of regional political unrest and a faltering world economy, Central America's exports have fallen 20 percent since 1980...
...Khomeini's Day of Hatred for the United States may tempt us to retaliate militarily, but are we ready for war...
...The U.S...
...policy has been focused on isolating both feuding parties, Iran and Iraq...
...military buildups in any region since the Vietnam war, Congress still has not been "officially notified," and most Americans are hard pressed to say exactly why we are courting disaster, and very possibly war, in a region where, for the greater part of seven years, U.S...
...House Speaker Jim Wright struck the right chord by inviting President Arias to address the full Congress later this month...
...Central America is polarized by armed conflict and paralyzed by economic depression...
...tries to rally stronger UN action, as the Reagan administration has announced...
...After the last sorrowful decades, those two oceans are at flood tide...
...could have sent four ships, maintaining its one-upmanship, but without direct involvement...
...Much more heavily dependent upon Iranian oil are our allies in Europe and Japan, but Kuwait did not invite their presence, and when the U.S...
...Saudi Arabia is so cautious today that it would not even offer temporary landing rights which the U.S...
...Reagan eased the withdrawal of our troops from Lebanon in 1984...
...presence is a means of protecting freedom of navigation through world sea lanes...
...That is both its strongest appeal and its greatest incentive...
...According to recent UN figures, 65 percent of Central Americans are impoverished, and 52 percent of their children are malnourished...
...Can he transcend the media's fascination with the hardly fresh revelation that American Catholics honor the pope but disagree (think of it...
...No use calling their bluff until we have sorted out just what there is to be gained by it, what our second step will be in the event that there is more to their bluff than we can predict...
...Are we in fact ready to ' 'join the war on the ground'' not just patrol the strait or attack from the air...
...The editors of the Economist are sober about the revolution: "Unless it [the U.S.] is prepared to join the war on the ground...
...And has the U.S...
...Is their claim to a legitimate role in the 11 September 1987: 467 region less defensible than our own...
...needed in the Kuwait operation...
...Is it wrong to assume that the U.S...
...Kuwait had suffered not one attack in the tanker war for eight months when the Reagan administration rushed to its "defense...
...A fourth alternative deserves to be tried...
...His words in New Orleans or Los Angeles will find their meaning in his deeds back in Rome—in his attitude toward the canon law strictures that would narrow academic freedom for Catholic higher education, in his next major appointments, in his interventions with religious orders, in his reform of Vatican finances, in his stance toward the synod on the laity...
...Then perhaps the "lean chain of sorrows" Neruda wrote of in Central America may finally if gradually be transformed into something more glorious and joyful...
...John Paul II is an extraordinary man possessed of a powerful vision of the church and of the papacy...
...Honduras—the poorest country in the region—has sunk to its 1970 position...
...it is indigenous...
...THE PAPAL VISIT No one should belittle the heartfelt enthusiasm of the millions of American Catholics who will line the roads and pack the stadiums during the Holy Father's visit to the United States...
...The Holy Father's visit is only a few moments—one hopes joyful ones—in a long process...
...If none were convincing, the sixty-day period could allow the administration to make a graceful exit from the region, declaring its "mission accomplished...
...The Central American peace proposal signed in Guatemala City on August 7 may not be a full-scale peace accord, nor even a fully detailed plan for regional recovery...
...11 September 1987: 469...
...The credit goes primarily to Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez...
...is dragged down unwittingly by the strong and ancient undercurrents of the Persian Gulf...
...Staring Khomeini down is not an effective policy...
...Reagan's administration has failed to tell us what his purposes and policy are...
...In some cases, their anger is understandable (in others, it reflects plain old-fashioned anti-Catholicism...
...We will not be cheering—or jeering—but, from a distance, watching and praying...
...non-conformity to the spirit of the age...
...the tankers turned out to be less vulnerable than the ships accompanying them...
...The risks of the Arias accord are understood no more keenly than by Central Americans...
...A variety of points is addressed by the Arias accord, and at least one substantial obstacle has already been surmounted...
...Of course, the Soviets have been the primary arms supplier of both Iraq and Kuwait for several years, and the Soviets have not been on good terms with Iran since the Iranian Communists were suppressed, two Soviet ships were attacked in the region, and one impounded...
...And, if we are, why...
...That is why Cardinal Obando y Bravo's prayer at the first meeting of Nicaragua's National Reconcilation Committee, to build "peace based on truth, love, justice, and freedom," should underlie the efforts of all those involved in the Arias experiment...
...Unfortunately the 'same vision lacks room for genuine dialogue, mistrusts pluralism, cannot account for past or future change, refuses to share power...
...Even the Economist, while cheering on the current American operation, acknowledges that we are in effect daring Khomeini to attack us...
...there is not much that even a superpower can do about it [the Iranian revolution]" (August 8...
...American intervention then became "necessary" to counteract Soviet influence in the gulf...
...There is too frequently a kind of counter-triumphalism behind this anti-papal fervor, a certitude about Right Answers as closed to questioning as the Vatican, a certitude that arms itself not with immutable categories of neo-Scholasticism but with pieties of modern right-thinking...
...Pressure for compliance with this first-of-its-kind agreement comes from those who speak the treaty's language...
...If they find Rome's positions unsatisfactory, they will have to develop their own—on the purposes and limits of sexual behavior, on the protection of new human life, on the essential conditions and practical maintenance of Catholic identity, on the relationship between prophetic departures and accountability to the whole church and its tradition...
...Frankly, we do not think that the "chilling" of Vatican II is about to end...
...Most of the attacks in the Iran-Iraq tanker war have actually been made by Iraq against Iranian ships and oil installations...
...asked for minesweepers and additional escorts, they declined, except for Britain and France who, it turns out, will send minesweepers to accompany their own ships in the region...
...or even the Soviets might do...
...While monitoring developments, Congress should devote increased attention to an even more perilous situation: the political and economic future of Mexico...
...But their substance is promising, both for the agreement's signatories and their neighbors, south and north...
...Per capita income in the region has shrunk precipitously at the same time: Costa Rica and Guatemala are now at their own 1972 levels...
...Not only have the Soviets not displayed any signs of threatening the U.S...
...Neutrality was at least our stated policy and the policy of our European allies...
...The pope will encounter not only enthusiastic crowds but angry demonstrators...
...interests per se in the gulf, their recent agreement to charter Kuwaiti ships came in response to the same kind of invitation extended to the U.S., and by the same host country: Kuwait...
...military aid to insurgents in Central America should be put on the back burner while the Arias accord is being tested...
...and Soviet Union have no mutual interests in the Persian Gulf (see J. Bryan Hehir, Commonweal, August 14...
...The chain of misery will extend far into the future...
...the War Powers Act could accomplish the same thing, only with the entire Congress to back it up...
...or U.S...
...Oddly enough, the heroic pope will foster a low-risk church...
...The Act would give Congress sixty days to press the administration to make a plausible case for our involvement, after which Congress could declare war, or find itself unconvinced of the prudence of the administration's activities, and pull our troops out...
...It is the messianic and heroic elements of the faith on which this pope, deeply rooted in his homeland's tragic experience, insists: suf468: Commonweal fering, struggle, and persecution as the trying fires of Christian life...
...If that is so, why did the U.S...
...Wright is correct in saying that any discussion of U.S...
...reducing the carnage...
...decide to protect this freedom now rather than during the height of the tanker war...
...Aspin's proposal to mine Iran's waters seems to be predicated upon the assumption that because Iran was thwarted in 1984 when "just one" of its fighters was shot down by the Saudis, one mine blast or so would surely call their bluff today...
...Two weeks after the agreement, thirteen countries, including the five signers, met in Caracas...
...What about U.S...
...And most of the rhetoric that has accompanied our ships to the gulf cannot stand the test either of history or common sense...
...Les Aspin (D-Wis...
...They are merely the precise questions that need intelligent, well-thought- out answers before the U.S...
...We cannot very well identify with them either...
...sacrifice and discipline...
...oil imports travel through the Strait of Hormuz...
...Policing the boundaries...
...Can John Paul II break through the reduction of his message to one more clash over sex...
...This work cannot be done on a simple diet of opposition to Rome...
...It is not, however, an enthusiasm we can, without serious qualifications, share...
...The deal Kuwait made with the Soviets resulted in the sending of three Soviet ships, with the promise of chartering more if necessary...
...In actuality, Kuwait is an ally of Iraq and has been so throughout the 1980s, hardly qualifying it as a neutral state...
...and the civil-war-torn countries of Nicaragua and El Salvador have reverted to development levels they had surpassed in the early 1960s...
...An economic emergency fund was set up to assist the five signatory nations, a realization that there must beplata as well as platitudes...
...The question Draper chooses not to address, but which the U.S...
...These are not cowardly questions...
...Containing that revolution will necessitate some degree of unity among the other Arab nations to hold it off, in addition to anything the U.S...
...Appointment by appointment, the pope is reforming the hierarchy in his own image...
...Today, the policy of our European allies remains intact, but our own has vastly changed...
...nor would Kuwait itself...
...Furthermore, Soviet support was crucial to the UN Security Council resolution for a cease-fire...
...Since none of the current arguments for our involvement seem to be sound, the sixty days would allow new and substantial arguments to be made...
...Those interests—of security and stability—are best advanced in the long run by Central Americans taking responsibility for their own destiny...
...must consider if it is to construct any credible policy in the gulf, is the threat of the Iranian revolution itself...
...The plan is not imposed...
...But its ultimate strength rests on the self-interest of the signatories themselves...
...Even before his election in 1986, Arias was formulating the outline of the present plan...
...While it is common knowledge that 57 percent of the world's oil reserves are controlled by the gulf nations (nearly half that amount by Saudi Arabia alone), only 4 percent of U.S...
...with many of his pronouncements...
...Ostensibly, what made the Kuwaiti appeal compelling to the U.S., and this is Draper's main point, was their decision to ask the Soviets for assistance first...
...Despite the favors we have been doing for Iran lately — selling it arms in exchange for undelivered hostages, and now, a reflagging operation that has paradoxically protected Iran's soft spot, allowing it to step-up its oil exports through the strait — there are genuine reasons to fear the spread of Islamic fundamentalism...
...Does the accord recognize the interests of the United States...
...Lay people who wish to live a renewed Catholicism will have to find and nurture their own resources—intellectual, institutional, and spiritual...
...agreed to reflag Kuwaiti tankers: that the United States is ready to help protect "neutral" Kuwait, portrayed as a hapless victim of the supertanker war...
...The results were anything but even...
...The long-range oil supply problems that face the West are real, but neither this reflagging nor any face-off in the Persian Gulf will address that long-term situation...
...oil interests...
...But just as our reflagging operation cannot settle the problems of long-range oil reserves, so it cannot begin to address the Islamic revolution...
...It is difficult to say, though the reason for our collective ignorance is clear: Mr...
...The War Powers Act —now being litigated in the federal courts by 114 Democrats in Con- gress— should be invoked, especially now that Iraq has resumed the tanker war in the face of Iranian stalling on the UN cease-fire...
...backing Saudi Arabia...
...It will be just as crucial if the U.S...
...It may signal, at long last, the coming of age of Central America itself in mediating its own complex difficulties...
...But it is the most significant effort by Central Americans in recent history to direct their own destiny...
...The leadership he is shaping will safely skirt all dangers of a diluted Catholic identity at the cost of missing enormous opportunities to challenge our world with the Gospel...
Vol. 114 • September 1987 • No. 15
