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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, AUGUST 5, 1983
PAGE 12
forced to creep along sideways in that ambivalent way that turns
peace into war....
Mr. Reagan is ducking the challenge, moving his policies one way
and his rhetoric the other. This is a recipe not for gaining sup
port but for losing credibility at home and abroad. No one is
going to rally behind a strong U.S. stand in Central America if
the president himself is afraid to do so.
In a column in the July 24 NEW YORK TIMES, Norman Podhoretz, editor of
COMMENTARY magazine, commented on the difficult decisions that President
Reagan may yet have to face (especially with an election coming up).
Even after World War II had already begun, President Roosevelt
promised never to send American boys to fight in Europe, and
President Reagan, while proclaiming that our vital interests are
involved in Central America, has announced that "there is no
thought of sending American combat troops" to the region. Yet if
the stakes are as high as President Reagan says, it is precisely
this thought that must be entertained, and it must be entertained
seriously. Above all else, this means resisting the temptation
to : ely on incremental half-measures and accepting the responsi
ET11ty tC:,-do whatever we have to do in order to succeed. On this
point, there actually is a lesson to be learned from Vietnam, and
it is that fighting� war�� cheap!! a� formula for·de
feat. President Kennedy, trying to win on the m1l1tary cheap,
refused to commit adequate military forces: President Johnson was
willing to commit the forces but, trying to win on the political
cheap, refused to mobilize the consensus he had inherited behind
a strategy that would have enabled those troops to succeed. Per
mitted in these ways to drag on inconclusively, the war [ in Viet
nam] gradually lost the public support it had once enjoyed, and
the stage was set for American withdrawal and all the disasters
that have trailed in its wake•••.
At the moment, the military situation in El Salvador seems to be
improving and perhaps the guerrillas can be defeated by the
Government without our direct participation. So much the better.
But if American military power should become necessary to prevent
El Salvador from following Cuba and Nicaragua into the Soviet
orbit, and if we should then fail to use it at all, or fail to use
it effectively, we will have revealed ourselves as a spent and
impotent force••� IT°'we are unwilling or unable to contain the
further advance of Soviet influence, and the Communist totalitar
ianism that usually accompanies it, in our own hemisphere, where
else can we be expected to do so? And if we are thus neutralized,
will anyone, including eventually even ourselves, be safe from
Soviet imperial control?
In his August 1 LOS ANGELES TIMES column, Ernest Conine reported that
Castro and the Sandinistas have changed their tune, slightly. But for how
long--and will they call the U.S. bluff?
The Cuban and Nicaraguan leaders were not suddenly overcome with
a fit of good will. They were responding to U.S. military pres
sures•••• The trouble is that the nervousness may not last. The