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PAGE 8
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, NOVEMBER 4, 1983
States, without telling Whitehall (Britain's Foreign Office) ahead of time,
did what Britain logically should have done, in some way or another.
The liberal U.S. press also wrung its hands in shame, typified by the NEW
YORK TIMES, which editorialized that "the cost [ of the intervention] is
loss of the moral high ground: a reverberating demonstration to the world
that America has no more respect for laws and borders, for the codes of
civilization, than the Soviet Union."
To which the October 26 WALL STREET JOURNAL replied:
The blunt fact is that small and vulnerable democracies have
every reason to feel endangered by a base for subversion in their
midst, and every right to seek help from those able to give it.
There is little time for the moral complexities--what is an
invasion, what treaties govern, what is the definition of sover
eignty--that perplex Georgetown [plush Washington, D.C.] salons.
Two days later, the same newspaper, in its lead editorial entitled "The
Lesson of Grenada," said this:
Let's try to make this one as explicit as possible: The "lesson
of Vietnam," we have been told continually for some 10 years, was
that the U.S. could not and should not ever rely on military
power to achieve its political goals. The lesson of Grenada is
that when necessary and appropriate, the U.S. can and should rely
on its military power to achieve political goals..•.
Everywhere within 30 miles of the Washington monument, the con
ventional wisdom has been that military power never solves
anything, and that we should not use force on anything short of
an invasion of Texas....
The lesson of Grenada is not, as it will be widely argued this
weekend, that the U.S. is going to the mattresses to make war on
its enemies. The lesson is that it's once again known that the
U.S. is willing to use its military as an instrument of policy.
One would think that to be an unstated assumption of anyone's
foreign policy. Up until this week, that assumption about the
U.S. military was doubted throughout the world. The world will
now assume otherwise, and will be better for it.
Lost in all the legalistic hubbub of whether or not the U.S. had the "right"
to do what it did have been the "fruits" of the action.
Simply put,
Grenadians as a whole are greatly relieved to be free of their Cuban choke
hold. A November 1 dispatch received over our UPI wire reported from St.
George's:
"Grenadians are happy," islander Cary Williams, 40, said Monday.
"We want to thank the U.S. President. The Congress does not
understand.
The Senate does not understand.
Grenadians are
free."
Many inhabitants of the breathtakingly beautiful former British
colony see the presence of U.S. forces as heralding a prosperous