THE DOMINICAN TRAGEDY
PROGRESSIVE Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" The Dominican Tragedy THhe fast-moving events of the revolutionary upheaval in the Dominican Republic, which broke out...
...It was a sad day for the Alliance for Progress when our narrow, legalistic victory in the OAS rested on the votes of countries such as Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, which are doing little or nothing to fulfill the social reforms of the Alliance...
...Spoken in a variety of ways, this view was virtually unanimous...
...The Administration's own staff officials in Santo Domingo are having disturbing second thoughts which lead them to believe our whole policy of military intervention may have been based on false information and groundless fears...
...This is the heart of the Administration's official case for intervention, but the information on which it was based was apparently supplied to the President by the CIA...
...Surely it would be an act of courage and statesmanship to admit a mistake rather than to go on compounding its evil effects...
...spokesmen are not able to give many details...
...claim, but several American correspondents on the scene in Santo Domingo, including Dan Kurzman of The Washington Post, Tad Szulc of The New York Times, and James Nelson Good-sell of The Christian Science Monitor, dug more deeply, and factually challenged the CIA-inspired view coming out of Washington...
...Venezuela abstained...
...President Johnson claimed that while last month's revolution began as a democratic struggle for social justice by seeking to restore Bosch to office, it soon fell under the control of "a band of Communist conspirators...
...Not only has U.S...
...Only intense diplomatic pressure exercised over the course of several days was able to persuade a bare two-thirds majority to create "an inter-American force" to restore peace and constitutional government to the Dominican Republic...
...Most newspapers carried in deadpan fashion the official U.S...
...intervention has given anti-Americans "an argument that you cannot trust the United States...
...The anguish and dismay our actions have created throughout Latin America can largely be explained by the fears of the forces of the democratic left that the United States may ultimately leave them no choice except between these two extremist and distasteful alternatives...
...The foreign minister of Chile, Gabriel Valdes, warned that U.S...
...By its rash decision to intervene militarily, the United States has accelerated this polarization...
...Tell the world we are not Communists,' was a repeated refrain...
...They assure newsmen that the list is authentic and ask from newsmen an attitude of 'trust us.' " As for Colonel Francisco Caamano Deno, the rebel commander whose presidency we refused to recognize because the CIA thought he was somehow tainted with Communism, that eminently conservative journal, Business Week, expressed the judgment of many correspondents on the scene when it observed: "Caamano has no known Communist leanings and is believed to have considerable popular following...
...There are going to be 53,000 Communists in the Dominican Republic because of the Marine intervention, and they will be U.S.-made...
...Such a policy would have been in conformity with the letter and the spirit of the Alliance for Progress, which is to offer the peoples of Latin America a democratic social revolution as an alternative to both Castroism and right-wing military dictatorships...
...Our claim to moral leadership is at stake—and even our capacity to judge events and make rational decisions is challenged...
...military intervention has created more Latin American Communists in a week than the Russians, Red Chinese, and Cubans could make in five years...
...policy done much to impair the non-Communist left in the Dominican Republic, but also by extension we have seriously damaged the non-Fidelista left throughout Latin America...
...The pretext for the coup was that Bosch was "color-blind" to the Communists...
...The chosen instrument of the United States at the outset was General Elias Wessin y Wessin and his military junta...
...Embassy officials think, as one expressed it, 'We have made a mistake and now must justify it.' " And The New York Times noted: "Some U.S...
...Political alternatives in the Dominican Republic are now being polarized...
...It is not only seasoned American correspondents who find it difficult to swallow the Johnson Administration-CIA claim that "Communist conspirators" took over the revolution...
...In view of the broad and deep strength of the non-Castro left, which was the mainstay of Bosch's popular support, American diplomacy could have shored up, quietly but effectively, the new democratic, leftist regime...
...The real motive, however, was the oligarchy's rejection of Bosch's moderate social reforms...
...The CIA has a dismal record in distinguishing among liberals, democratic leftists, and Fidelistas, as its shameful role and wildly inaccurate information in the Bay of Pigs fiasco amply demonstrated...
...They stress that anti-Communist Army elements of the rebel movements are by far the best-armed and the most powerful . . ." Kurzman added, "Every rebel I met in my four days in the pro-Bosch territory declared friendship for the United States and opposition to the Communists...
...There is no simple answer to this question, but we cannot ultimately avoid answering it...
...In siding with Wessin and the oligarchy we have run the grave risk of destroying the democratic reformist center which we profess to support...
...Thus, James McCartney reported to the Chicago Daily News from Santo Domingo: "Some U.S...
...In much the same language Goodsell cabled The Christian Science Monitor: "Some U.S...
...He added, "Only the Communists are happy, everyone else is sad...
...Wrote Kurzman: "Many foreign diplomats here, particularly those from Latin America, say that the Communists represent the noisiest elements, but have not a dominant influence either in the leadership or among the masses favoring the return of former President Bosch...
...No number of Marines and paratroopers will be able to dominate for long an aroused and hostile Latin America which our actions drive into the Castroist camp...
...Regarding the "list of known Communists in postitions of leadership," Goodsell reported that "when pressed for specifics, U.S...
...In meetings with newsmen, Szulc noted, individual rebels insist that 'we are not Communists.' Judging from this background and attitudes, this is probably so...
...However desirable the end that was sought, we cannot condone the illegal means that were employed...
...This is the real meaning of the anguished words of the Chilean foreign minister...
...If they ever falter or decline, the United States will face a grim prospect...
...officials are backing away somewhat from the firm conclusion that Communists had become the principal element on the rebel side...
...Wessin led the coup which in 1963 overthrew the democratically-elected regime of Juan Bosch after barely seven months in office...
...One of the most powerful refutations of the Johnson Administration's cry of Communist domination of the revolution came from Goodsell of the cautious Christian Science Monitor: "While there are Communists in their midst, the top rebel command is in the hands of the non-Communist elements who fiercely proclaim their opposition to Communism...
...What a staggering indictment of American policy and American morality for U.S...
...Article 15 of that charter prescribes, "No state or group of states has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatsoever, in the internal or the external affairs of any other state...
...Nothing can veil the naked fact that in sending more than 30,000 troops to the city of Santo Domingo the United States flagrantly violated the charter of the Organization of American States...
...Not only in Latin America, but in Africa and Asia, where convulsive social upheaval is now going on, the power and the moral influence of the United States cannot be exercised by the naked use of force inherent in President Johnson's approach...
...spokesmen that he would find Communist leaders at rebel headquarters, but he went from "office to office in the rebel command" and "I could find no evidence that they were anywhere in these key command positions...
...Former President Bosch spoke for many a Latin American democrat when he cried out that U.S...
...They [U.S...
...It is inconceivable to us that President Johnson could cling to his original estimate of the situation when correspondents of three of the most reputable newspapers in the country quote his own representatives in Santo Domingo as fearing "we made a mistake...
...government spokesmen] say there are fifty-three known Communists," he said...
...Writing in The New York Post, James A. Wechsler touched on the heart of the moral dilemma confronting us as a nation when he asked: "Have we reached a national judgment that there can be no scrupulous adherence to laws and charters because the Communists subvert the rules of the game...
...Goodsell told how he was informed by U.S...
...Behind Wessin, whom the United States subsequently sought to depose as a gesture to the Dominican people, who hate him, was the narrow and corrupt oligarchy which was the only beneficiary of the tyrannical Trujillo dictatorship that ruled from 1930 until 1961...
...policy went far beyond President Johnson's originally announced humanitarian purpose of protecting and evacuating Americans and other foreign nationals from strife-torn Santo Domingo...
...But it soon became clear that President Johnson had misled the nation and the world, that in sending large numbers of troops to Santo Domingo the United States' true objective was political—to prevent "another Castro...
...The choice may rapidly develop into one between the forces represented by Wessin and his successors and with it a return to Trujillo-style military rule on the one hand, or Castroism on the other...
...Our actions have also brought dismay and anguish to many of our best friends in the Western Hemisphere and elsewhere among the nations...
...The members of the Organization of American States were neither consulted nor advised until after we took action...
...Meanwhile, it has become clear that if the United States had not intervened to save General Wessin, whose forces were badly mauled by the rebels, Juan Bosch, the democratic social reformer, probably would now be in the Presidential palace in Santo Domingo...
...PROGRESSIVE Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" The Dominican Tragedy THhe fast-moving events of the revolutionary upheaval in the Dominican Republic, which broke out barely a month ago, have created a crisis of conscience for the United States and its role in the world...
...Let us never forget that the only real friends we have in Latin America are these in the democratic left and center...
...Embassy officials who have played a key role in the evolving crisis acknowledge the possibility that calling the troops may have been a mistake...
...International law and custom gave us that right...
...Our only salvation is to depend upon creative ideas, sympathetic understanding, and economic assistance—and, most of all, to identify ourselves with the forces seeking long overdue change rather than with the oligarchies bent on preserving a corrupt and miserable status quo...
...The most alarming feature of the OAS vote was that those countries which are the most firmly committed to social reform and the practices of democracy voted against us...
...Szulc reported to The Times his on-the-scene impression that the rebels were risking their lives to prevent a return of the hated Trujillo dictatorship in the reincarnated form of a new military junta...
...Mexico, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, and Ecuador voted "no" as a dramatic protest against what they regarded as our illegal and immoral action in sending Marines into Santo Domingo for a political and not a humanitarian purpose...
...It was apparent almost from the beginning that U.S...
...officials on the spot to admit "we have made a mistake and now must justify it...
Vol. 29 • June 1965 • No. 6
