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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, APRIL 29, 1983
PAGE 13
Opponents of
u.s.
efforts in Central America say they are trying
to avoid "another Vietnam," but it is precisely the example of
Vietnam which suggests that Mr. Reagan's policy is basically
right. Eight years ago President Ford appealed to Congress for
$700 million to save South Vietnam from collapse. It was just
money, but it was refused.
We liberals cannot avert our eyes from what ensued: three million
murders in Cambodia, total deprivation of human rights in Vietnam
(and corruption at least as bad in President Thieu's time) and a
falling of dominoes. North Vietnam has taken over South Vietnam,
Laos, and Cambodia; now it is shelling Thailand.
We are under warning about Central America now. The Sandinistas
in Nicaragua openly proclaim that they are part of a "revolution
without frontiers." In 1980, the late Salvadoran communist chief
Cayetano Carpio asserted that "the revolutionary process in Cen
� America is! single process. The triumphs of one are the
triumphs of the other. Guatemala will have its hour. Honduras
its. Costa Rica, too, will have its hour of glory. The first
note was heard in Nicaragua."
And Central America is close to our borders. If many American
communities objected to the arrival of Vietnamese refugees and if
Florida became divided over the arrival of 125,000 Cubans in
1980, we mi � ht well quake� the consequences here
g
hundreds of
thousands
.E!_
Central Americans begin streaming toward the
u.s.
If Mexico, too, becomes unstable, the numbers could be in the
millions, resulting in an internal security-civil liberties
nightmare, not to mention job competition and ethnic frictions.
The publisher of one of El Salvador's leading newspapers said on U.S. tele
vision that if the United States does not fight in his country "then it will
have to fight in Mexico, or in El Paso or in Arizona."
"Will Congress Lose This War?" asked the title over an article by Patrick J.
Buchanan in his syndicated column, appearing in the SAN DIEGO UNION on
April 8. "Let us not mince words," said Mr. Buchanan, and he didn't.
The other evening, former CIA Director William Colby related
[some facts about the Vietnam War] •••• Who then lost Vietnam? I
asked. Congress, he retorted: The Congress of the United States
lost the Vietnam War.
And so it did. In a series of decisions shameful and vindictive,
the American Congress between 1973 and 1975 reduced South Viet
nam's war rations to one percent of what the United States ex
pended in 1968 and 1969, leaving our desperate allies to the
mercy of the dozen Soviet-supplied divisions from the North that
invaded in the spring of 1975. Congress was collaborator in the
worst defeat in American history, ushering in the greatest holo-
caust [in Cambodia] since Auschwitz.
� �
Now, it is happening all� again. In Central America. Again�
the petuI"ant whine that _!!! are on the side of corrupt and·