Putting Democracy in Peril
LEMOYNE, JAMES
Putting Democracy in Peril October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan By Gary Sick Times Books. 277pp. $23.00. Under Fire: An American Story By Oliver...
...North contends that the decision to send profits from Iranian arms sales to the Nicaraguan contra rebels was an afterthought that had nothing to do with the original quest to trade weapons for hostages...
...securing the release of U.S...
...But as with all great scandals, this one has a seemingly endless capacity to generate new theories of conspiracy and dark doings still kept from public scrutiny...
...Oliver North defends his secret and almost certainly illegal support for the contras as necessary to bring democracy to Nicaragua and Central America...
...His kind of conservatism as ill fits the new age we have entered as the tired liberalism it disdains...
...now completing a book on Central America The American public has dubbed as "Irangate" or, more prosaically, "the Iran-contra affair," ill-advised and very probably illegal actions of Ronald Reagan and his zealous aides...
...North is right to say that the Sandinistas were dictators and that Cuba and the Soviet Union were expanding their influence into Central America...
...446 pp...
...freedom, tolerance and individual liberty...
...To Sick, along-serving expert on Iran who ended his government career as a top adviser to Jimmy Carter, the origin of the Iran-contra scandal was a treasonous decision by Reagan's 1980 election advisers to cut a secret deal with Iran...
...This coincidence of events is disturbing enough to warrant a very hard look by officials carrying more clout than journalists or a former government employee like Gary Sick...
...They still are...
...If Ronald Reagan wanted to confront Nicaragua, he should have done so openly...
...That is a powerful, worthy position...
...But he is too much the praetorian and too little the democrat...
...we won't know...
...all tempered by the intense nationalism of a Marine Corps officer wounded both physically and spiritually in Vietnam...
...To achieve his ends North allied himself with some of the most brutal, anti-democratic forces in Central America...
...One hopes Americans realize this before further folly is committed in the name of a great democracy that can achieve far more by following its principles than by violating them...
...He concludes his book with a passionate plea: "With our history and our ideals, the United States should never have allowed revolution and change to become the exclusive domain of the Left...
...True conservatism would never violate these foundations of republicanism...
...Reviewed by James LeMoyne Former correspondent, New York "Times...
...He acknowledges that given the duplicitous nature of the events he is trying to unravel, many of his sources are unreliable...
...Both make sad and sordid reading...
...Several journalists of high standing have tried to corroborate Sick's charges without success...
...North offers a very different view that, in its own fashion, is also plausible...
...25.00...
...Neither of these accounts is easy for a reader to verify...
...Under Fire: An American Story By Oliver L. North HarperCollins...
...The idea, says Sick, was to keep Jimmy Carter from winning re-election with an "October surprise...
...a seamy bargain was struck with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's revolutionary regime: In return for an Iranian promise not to release the 52 American hostages held in Iran to the Carter Administration, Reagan's men promised, with Israeli help, to send weapons to Iran...
...the head of Reagan's 1980 campaign effort and the subsequent CIA chief...
...The leaders of the contra rebels he backed were corrupt and, in several cases, guilty of cowardice, rape, torture, and murder...
...hostages in time to win grateful votes in the November balloting...
...In recounting his courageous conduct in Vietnam and his worthy fight against terrorism, North shows himself to be a man of great courage...
...From there it stumbled toward three objectives: trading guns for American hostages held in Lebanon, opening a new relationship with supposed "moderates" in Islamic Iran and, in a corollary step, denying the Soviet Union further inroads in the Persian Gulf following the invasion of Afghanistan...
...strength deteriorated into disdain for Congress and the gross hypocrisy of trading arms for hostages...
...The author bends over backward to write in a balanced, nonpartisan way, and his cautiousness strengthens his argument...
...Perhaps key Reagan loyalists did not negotiate with Iran in order to scuttle Jimmy Carter...
...Each believes that important aspects of our political system are at best awry and, at worst, fundamentally corrupt...
...The ideals of our own revolution...
...North strongly maintains that Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party faction he represented did not know how to respond to Soviet aggression or to growing terrorism in the Middle East...
...But for Oliver North such an investigation would be another intolerable intrusion into the near-omnipotent Presidency that he once happily served, and that he still fervently believes affords the country the best and most constitutionally sanctioned leadership...
...Reading Under Fire, one quickly sees how North captured public sympathy and continues to enjoy a heady following...
...It is a tragedy and worse that Reagan'sattempttorestoreU.S...
...and possibly even with one...
...Without a public inquiry...
...Hisisataleofan imperial, extra-constitutional Presidency that deserved to terminate in the impeachment of Ronald Reagan and the imprisonment of several of his key cohorts...
...But that does not mean a dirty deal along the lines he describes was not in fact struck...
...telling them that by rewarding him with the American hostages, Teheran could pave the way for renewed American arms sales denied by Carter...
...Casey or other Reagan aides could easily have urged the Israelis to act as "deniable" intermediaries in such a high-risk maneuver...
...They reach utterly distinct conclusions, yet at a deeper level the arguments of these two ideologically incompatible former public servants reflect a disturbingly shared vision...
...His is the story of a very traditional American battered by an era of uncertainty and change...
...something the supposedly "soft" Carter Administration, to its great credit, steadfastly refused to do...
...Instead, he and his aides sullied themselves and our nation with lies and a secret war that, if fought for worthy ideals, should have been fought under the leadership of Nicaraguan democrats, not of CIA-selected former National Guardsmen...
...Had he taken his case to Congress and the people and kept it there, he would very likely have won the approval he needed...
...and strike back hard...
...By choosing the language of scandal, it has already passed judgment on President Reagan' s twisted dealings with Iran, Nicaragua's contra rebels, and the terrorists who both killed Americans and took them hostage in the Middle East...
...Onaprima facie level, however, the case he makes seems strong enough to warrant a public inquiry to set the matter to rest once and for all...
...He describes Reagan's byzantine dealings with Teheran as an ad hoc policy that did not begin until 1985...
...Knee-jerk liberals should read this book to understand why so many of their fellow citizens have, with some merit, blamed liberalism for the deterioration of American life...
...Ronald Reagan may not have offered the right approach either...
...There are other lessons here for Americans sorting through the debris of the present moment, seeking a cure for the serious ills at home and a new stance for the post-Cold War world beyond our borders...
...If Sick is right, the President of the United States, the head of the CIA, the head of the National Security Council, and various other powerful public servants were guilty of treason and should be in jail...
...Nevertheless, he deserves credit for telling Leonid I. Brezhnev and killers like Muammar Qaddafi and Abu Nidal that, if struck, the United States would strike back...
...Assisted by a talented writer, William Novak, North has produced a compelling, human and at times funny bookthatisone of the most effective conservative attacks on American liberalism yet written...
...Sick's book charges that in a series of clandestine meetings led by William J. Casey...
...were inspiring two centuries ago...
...Similarly, the local military commanders North relied on in El Salvador and Honduras were those who favored death squads and military domination of civil society...
...Oliver North, one of Reagan's most committed paladins, flatly denies Sick's charges...
...If North is right, the same officials were guilty of gross stupidity, of rewarding terrorists for their terrorism, and of undermining the constitutionally mandated procedures and institutions guaranteeing the American republic that they wanted to defend...
...Because he seems to think such views are idle liberalism, Oliver North undercuts his own defense of democracy...
...In their new books, Gary Sick and Oliver L. North offer two versions of the events that almost sank Reagan...
...What kind of Nicaragua would they have created had they won a military victory...
...But his militaristic, clandestine and profoundly anti-democratic approach to the problem split the American people, perverted our public discourse, and separated us as a nation from the ideals of democracy Northinsistshe believes in...
...But means affect ends...
...Ultimately, though, this is a cautionary tale...
...Italso exacted ahuman toll of more than 100,000 dead and wounded Nicaraguans...
...What we do know is that the hostages were released as soon as Ronald Reagan took office, and that American weapons almost immediately began to flow to Iran from Israeli stockpiles...
...North was raised with a deep devotion to conservative Christianity, to family and to smalltown values...
...As a result, his claims have been dismissed bymany...
...Still, a democracy that is defended by deceiving the people, deceiving the Congress, defying the laws, and waging secret wars is democracy in peril...
...It maybe, ashetellsus, that American liberalism has erred by relying too much on the state, by equating poverty with hapless victimization, by doubting even sound American principles and by naively thinking that force is no longer necessary in our chaotic world...
...Is this what happened...
...A plausible alternate explanation is that Israel convinced the Iranians to wait and deal with Reagan...
Vol. 74 • December 1991 • No. 14
