COMMENTS: Our Outrages in Nicaragua
Bromwich, David
Smuggle a thousand rifles, submachine guns, and grenade launchers into the 20 largest American cities, distribute them among known criminals, excops, the hard core of left- and right-wing...
...as teachers only, that is...
...All this could happen in the United States...
...Why do they destroy us and then point to the effects and say we are destroying ourselves...
...What end do we foresee beyond the destruction...
...The smugglers of arms (they would say to themselves) are so rich, so far away, so irresponsible...
...13...
...But can it be so easy to turn outlaws into citizens...
...But it looks as if our democracy-for-export were a rather different thing...
...We treat the pledges of a revolution as if they were election promises, and we feel a young country ought to see the importance of these...
...And so the United States— the United States of the Guatemalan coup and the Bay of Pigs—has gone South again to give a lesson in democracy...
...It would not require subtlety or courage from the foreign power that tried it...
...That the Sandinista leadership includes several Communists has especially piqued our conscience...
...Violent incidents would be the order of the day, on subways, in buses, or merely walking down the street...
...Very quickly, life in our cities would become intolerable...
...Smuggle a thousand rifles, submachine guns, and grenade launchers into the 20 largest American cities, distribute them among known criminals, excops, the hard core of left- and right-wing lunatic sects, and assure a continuous supply of ammunition and tactical intelligence, leaving behind the simple order: Disorganize...
...Then, too, a legitimate government was opposed by rebels, on whom a factitious legitimacy had been conferred by interested foreign powers...
...Our democracy at home is what its name implies: a government elected freely by the people...
...If 12 you ask Ronald Reagan, he is surprised that you should ask...
...After we have taught them murder, we will teach them restraint...
...How can they set about wrecking our society, and then call our society a wreckage...
...Then, too, the government was charged—by the church above all—with real abuses of power, and the rebels said that it did not represent the will of the people...
...Fifty years later in America, we are more delicate...
...as moral guides...
...It is a compound of anarchy and terror: a policy of plunder, kidnap, and assassination...
...Most would still hope for its victory, and do what they could to assist it, but with some bafflement about their fate...
...Historically, to some extent we are now following the November 11, 1984 precedent of Vietnam in 1962-63...
...The end will be a government like ours: peaceful, equable, just...
...Many would complain about the inefficiency of the government...
...What would the result be...
...This, of course, is precisely what the United States has begun to do in Nicaragua...
...We must be prepared to stay in Nicaragua longer than we thought...
...create chaos...
...But a fairer analogy is Spain in 1936...
...disrupt...
...In 1936, that cry was taken up by fascists throughout Europe...
...We say instead that the Nicaraguan government is not "keeping its promises to the people...
...It is aimed not at the correction of injustices (something never yet attempted by these means), but the destruction of the very possibility of civil society...
...Now that the CIA instruction manuals have been publicized in the country that hired their author, we can see what the export consists of...
...The president's answer is plain...
...Citizens would begin routinely staying home from work...
...only an ideology virulent enough, and a readiness to exploit the adventurism of brutal agents...
...We have deployed "advisers," native guerrillas, and mercenaries in a terrorist war against a government that, a few years ago, overthrew the most rapacious dictator of our hemisphere...
Vol. 32 • January 1985 • No. 1
