COMMENT
Comment Vice President George Bush has vowed not to leave the contras 'twisting in the wind, wondering if they are going to be done in by a peace plan.' The Battle of the Isthmus Ronald Reagan...
...that's Reagan's double bind, and he's been ensnared in it for some time...
...The original rationalization for aiding the contras was twofold: to compel the Sandinistas to democratize, and to prevent Nicaragua from aiding revolutionary forces in neighboring countries...
...troops to an invasion of Nicaragua will be met with massive protest...
...Pass the Glasnost, Please For years, for decades, the suspicious leaders of the Soviet Union jealously guarded their closed society from the prying, spying eyes of outsiders...
...But the Administration can't let go because its true intention all along has been to overthrow the Nicaraguan government...
...To no small degree, the grass-roots organizing by the Left has paid off...
...negotiators: Whenever they wanted to scuttle a particular treaty proposal, they had only to raise stiff demands for strict inspection...
...While it says it uses tissue strictly from "third-party, nonprofit procuring agencies," that could change as more and more tissue is needed to supply the expected demand...
...Except for Honduras, the Administration's own allies in Central America now see their best interests served, at least for the moment, by negotiations rather than mobilizations...
...Domestic support for the contras has fallen back to pre-Oliver North days, and the Arias plan has seized the high ground...
...Bells may clatter and tickertape may flutter on Wall Street, but on the shop floor and at the fast-food counter, working Americans are in no position to celebrate...
...This is new political thinking in action...
...That's why they had allowed the U.S...
...We don't seem to understand that, just because we can do something, it does not follow that we should...
...Honduras was ready to listen...
...To check on compliance, the United States insisted on continuous on-site inspection of Soviet missile production, assembly, and maintenance plants...
...That's Reaganomics...
...That's why Reagan calls himself a contra and embraced the contra leadership in late August, meeting for the first time with Enrique Bermudez, the commander of the contras...
...The ethical issues seemed no more complicated than those involved in the transplanting of organs, from hearts to eyes, obtained from the recently deceased...
...One company, now in the development stages, plans to begin marketing cells grown from fetal tissue within a few years...
...troops could accomplish that goal, and all but the dizziest members of the Administration recognize the perils of such involvement...
...What, our Government asked, did the other side have to hide...
...Until the Sandinistas have "irreversibly" installed democracy in Nicaragua, the U.S...
...Advocates of women's right to choose abortion also have reason to worry about the debating points to be scored by the opposition...
...aid, the contras are doomed like so many baby buzzards abandoned in the nest...
...During the first half of 1987, real wages (earnings discounted for inflation) continued to fall to a point lower than when Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 and just barely above the 1962 level...
...military sites...
...When it comes to the pornography laws, Meese is clean...
...to inspections...
...Right-to-life" groups are afraid that finding a positive use for fetal tissue will give abortions a humanitarian aspect...
...Government has played in fostering turmoil in Central America...
...Reagan in his dotage may yet order a military strike against Managua after some cooked-up altercation between Nicaragua and Honduras...
...inspection terms...
...As you can see," said Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze on August 7, "we are expanding the area of confidence to the maximum extent by opening up the territory of the U.S.S.R...
...When Costa Rica's president, Oscar Arias, persuaded Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua to fashion an accord among themselves in August, the Reagan Administration was dumbfounded...
...An early example was provided by John Cardinal O'Connor, Catholic Archbishop of New York, on the day the Times report appeared...
...Fortunately, some two dozen officials—including the Air Force's perennially embattled whistle-blower, A. Ernest Fitzgerald—had the courage to refuse to sign the pledge on grounds that doing so would compromise their constitutional rights...
...Whether the nation's chief law-enforcement officer engaged in the deliberate obstruction of justice remains to be determined...
...If I had said to him that I would put a baby to death to keep him alive, he would have put me in jail...
...That's the motto of the Reagan Administration in Central America...
...The first is, "It's too early to tell...
...position...
...Since when do these countries get to call the shots...
...Bermudez, a former member of Anastasio Somoza's National Guard, has been implicated in several human-rights abuses, but no matter...
...Medical researchers, according to a detailed report in The New York Times, are making breakthroughs in the successful use of tissues from aborted fetuses to treat a variety of diseases—especially Parkinson's and other nerve disorders, but also leukemia, diabetes, and radiation sickness...
...As expected, the Soviets refused...
...It's worked before...
...For six years, activists opposed to U.S...
...The latest of these secrecy measures was a threat to revoke, by late August, the security clearance of any Federal official who refused to sign a secrecy pledge covering not only classified information but also material that might be deemed "classifiable"— a category vague enough to cover almost any contingency...
...Confronted with such opposition, the Government backed down...
...Could someone pass the glasnost, please...
...Philip Habib gave the first indication that a peaceful settlement was not on the Administration's agenda when he resigned in August...
...negotiators in Geneva were instructed to withdraw their inspection demands...
...But logic yields everything to power...
...foreign policy in the region...
...The Reagan Administration can hardly argue that the Sandinistas are a threat to the region when the very countries most in jeopardy from the phantom threat have managed to make peace with Managua...
...A Setback for Secrecy From the earliest days of the Reagan Administration, official secrecy has been a cause close to the President's heart...
...military sites...
...Then the Hydra-like Elliot Abrams, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, took the propaganda offensive...
...The second, "It's too late to stop...
...The bolstering of Duarte used to be the main object of U.S...
...One curious footnote: The American Civil Liberties Union was not among the organizations that compelled the Reagan Administration to back down...
...Every effort will be made to paint Nicaragua as a barbaric state that has duped its neighbors and enslaved its people...
...Habib had taken the heretical position of supporting the Arias plan, and so he had to go...
...As always, many members of Congress can be counted on to go along with such nonsense...
...His transparently dishonest "peace plan" for Central America has rotted on the vine, and the Central American leaders seem intent on pursuing a genuine negotiated settlement to the civil wars that rage through the isthmus...
...And he demanded comparable Soviet access to U.S...
...Administration officials no doubt will find some specious violation to pin on the Nicaraguan government and thereby scuttle the Arias plan...
...Already, the Times reported, a woman has asked if she could be artifi'For the third year in a row, the President's annual budget has fallen victim to the Congressional appetite for domestic spending at the expense of defense.' —Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger Fitzgerald's First Law of Military Procurement, as propounded by Air Force whistleblower A. Ernest Fitzgerald: 'There are only two phases of a program...
...Unlike the days before the Vietnam war, resistance to U.S...
...It is, of course, too early to claim victory...
...Time is running out for Ronald Reagan...
...And so, late in August, the U.S...
...Government will not halt aid to the contras, the Administration vowed...
...Reagan has already made his choice...
...Without U.S...
...Only the commitment of U.S...
...For the first time in six years, it seems likely that the Nicaraguan government may outlive the Reagan Administration...
...It's understandable, of course...
...Under his inspiring leadership, the Justice Department has dramatically intensified its pursuit of pornographers...
...We can never afford to underestimate the lengths to which they will go to reap profits...
...And the pharmaceutical and medical-supply corporations will enter the picture...
...Contrary to Administration hype, more and more American workers are having a harder and harder time making ends meet...
...intervention have succeeded in countering the falsehoods disseminated by Washington...
...Are we going to decide that fetuses, like human organs, are not commodities...
...negotiators also pressed for the right to send a team of inspectors on short notice to the site of a suspected Soviet treaty violation...
...intervention stands at the ready...
...Now it takes a back seat to overthrowing the Sandinistas...
...But it was out of the question to permit Soviet inspectors to visit sensitive U.S...
...But, because abortion itself is such an explosive issue, everything it touches is affected...
...But the Administration would have nothing of it...
...Largely through the churches, vast numbers of Americans have been informed about the hidden role the U.S...
...And workers take it on the chin...
...The peace plan must be sabotaged, and contra aid must prevail at all costs...
...After the elbow from Washington, Honduras has been doing all that it can to obstruct the peace process...
...According to the terms of the accord, outside countries—that means the United States, as well as Cuba and the Soviet Union—will have to stop aiding insurgent groups by November 7 in exchange for increased democratization in the five Central American nations...
...Reagan's infatuation with the contras is no passing fling...
...That worked out nicely for U.S...
...War is good...
...Unfortunately, not all doctors and ethicists will agree...
...They found the notion of inspection—inspection to enforce arms-control treaties, for example—totally unacceptable...
...The Reagan Administration gloats about a five-year economic recovery...
...They had been assured, said a nameless Administration source, that the Soviets would never agree to on-site inspections...
...The physician she asked told her it was not only technically impossible but also ethically wrong...
...Then something unexpected happened: The Russians agreed to the U.S...
...We have wisely chosen to ban the sale of human organs, but we unwisely permit the sale of renewable body tissue such as blood, bone marrow, and sperm...
...One more chance to try looms...
...The Reagan Administration, and especially the Pentagon, is not prepared to lose another war at home...
...In expressing concern during his sermon, he intoned, "My father was in bed with a nerve disease for five years...
...If we allow it to become a multimillion-dollar business, our society will have taken one more plunge into the moral gutter...
...The Flesh Peddlers Society may never figure out how to keep up with the scientists and anticipate the ethical issues it will have to resolve in the aftermath of technological advance...
...We are really seeing a new thrust in terms of prosecution," says Paul J. Maurer of the National Coalition Against Pornography, Inc., and H. Robert Showers, who heads the Department's new anti-obscenity enforcement unit, adds: "Mr...
...American intelligence agencies were stung...
...Dirty Dancing Attorney General Edwin Meese III displayed, at best, astonishing incompetence and, at worst, criminal malfeasance in his handling of the early stages of the Iran-contra affair, when crucial documents were shredded while he looked the other way...
...Comment Vice President George Bush has vowed not to leave the contras 'twisting in the wind, wondering if they are going to be done in by a peace plan.' The Battle of the Isthmus Ronald Reagan has got himself in a nice pickle...
...But the contras can't win...
...The fetuses used for research have been donated with informed consent by women who had, for reasons of their own, decided to abort them...
...Now that the Sandinistas have agreed to open up the political process and have come to terms with their neighbors, no excuse remains for supporting the contras...
...It is still possible to conclude that fetal tissue is a medical boon that no one has a right to buy and sell...
...A virtual outpost of the Pentagon, Honduras eagerly echoed the U.S...
...That option remains on his table...
...She thought to have tissue from the aborted fetus transplanted into her father's brain...
...Reagan knows this, and so he is caught: Either he deserts the contras or he disavows the attempt at a negotiated settlement in Nicaragua...
...Peace is bad...
...Will women be expected to conceive in order to abort...
...But the Administration was particularly hurt because the Arias plan threatens Reagan's ever-cherished contras...
...Being upstaged by upstarts is always painful...
...But elective abortions are not the issue...
...See "Sworn to Silence," by Donna Demac, May issue...
...But every day, the odds on its implementation are happily more remote...
...Scrounging for the flimsiest pretexts, the Reagan Administration scratched and scraped to undermine the agreement...
...These discouraging statistics underscore the true nature of the so-called Reagan Revolution," says David Dembo of the Council on International and Public Affairs, which recently published a report on the economy...
...Describing the accord as "more a preliminary agreement than a final peace treaty," he cautioned against its "many ambiguities" and instructed State Department officials in Central America to express U.S...
...Instead, the ACLU's Washington legislative counsel, Allan Adler, came up with a memo in which he found "no inherent constitutional barrier" against the proposed pledge...
...Meese has bigger fish to fry...
...Meese elevated obscenity to a top criminal-justice priority...
...Not to worry about such small matters, however...
...In his frenzy against "leaks"—that is, access by citizens to facts about what their Government is doing—the President has proposed using lie-detector tests, prior-restraint "contracts," and other draconian measures to intimidate Federal officials who might be tempted to let the truth slip out...
...The signed peace plan is a "preliminary political accord and not an international treaty," said Carlos Lopez Contreras, the foreign minister of Honduras...
...Fortunately, too, a Federal employees' union announced it would challenge the pledge in the courts...
...The Administration is so devoted to the contras—and so intent on derailing the Arias accord-that it is even ignoring the pleas of its puppet, El Salvador's Jose Napoloeon Duarte...
...Also still under investigation is the Attorney General's involvement in the Wedtech case, which may have further felonious implications...
...The rest of the criminal code may pose more problems...
...Any effort to commit U.S...
...Even if Congress doles out more military aid, the contras won't have the power to overthrow the Nicaraguan government...
...Then the Administration can continue its policy of aggression against Nicaragua, and escalation is not out of the question...
...ACLU members might consider asking just what it is their dues are paying for...
...misgivings...
...So it went in the recent discussions about a superpower treaty to eliminate medium-range and short-range missiles...
...proposals to go forward...
...Since the Administration can always claim that democracy isn't "irreversibly" established, it has an all-purpose escape hatch...
...If fetal tissue turns out to provide the treatment of choice for a number of relatively common afflictions, another question arises...
...The speaking tours, petition drives, town-hall meetings, demonstrations, and acts of civil disobedience have all done their part...
...President Duarte urged acceptance of the agreement, since it strengthened his hand against the FMLN, Salvador's main guerrilla group...
...With scarcely more than a year left to accomplish his most treasured goal, he stands isolated, his policy discredited...
...cially inseminated with sperm from her father, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease...
...Well-intentioned people will obviously be eager to help sick loved-ones...
...the Russians would say nyet, the negotiations would founder, and it was all the fault of the paranoid Soviets...
...The Bull Market The stock market soars to record heights...
Vol. 51 • October 1987 • No. 10
