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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, APRIL 20, 1984
PAGE 7
A decision on your part to••.conduct truly free and open elec
tions would significantly improve the prospect of better rela
tions between our two countries.
Hopeful reasoning, that last paragraph. The divisive letter, of course,
undercut President Reagan's entire policy (that of attempting to conduct
action in Central America without committing U.S. troops directly). The
appeal also ignores the fact that "it takes two to tango." Nicaraguan au
thorities have yet, for example, to remove that line in their national
anthem which refers to the United States as the "enemy of mankind."
Foreign policy in the hands of a deliberation body, such as Congress,
rather than being the responsibility of the executive branch, is a recipe
for disaster. P.H. Terzian, an assistant editor of the LOS ANGELES TIMES,
wrote in his newspaper's April 19 edition:
Does Congress have a creative role to play in foreign policy?
Sometimes. Has it used its powers and resources to advance the
national interest? Not really. It has habitually reduced for
eign policy to the ingredients of partisan dispute .QE. provincial
concern••••
Who can deny our luck that Franklin D. Roosevelt defied an iso
lationist Congress to prepare for the Axis threat and supply
Britain in its hour of need? Now, such shadowy substances as
international law and Third World approbation are invoked to pro
test Reagan
t
s policies in Central America and the Caribbean•••.
We now know that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of the
1930s was obtuse, and that Secretary of State Dean Acheson was
entitled to complain some years later that "what the executive
brings is initiative, proposals for action� what the legislature
brings Ts criticism, limitation, modification
.Q.!
veto."•••
It is useful to remember that it was the Senate, not the Presi
dent, that kept the United States out of the League of Na
tions.... The Senate response to Hitler was an affirmation of
American neutrality•••• And kicking itself in anger at the end of
the Vietnam War, the Senate punished the innocent with the War
Powers Resolution, thereby usurping the President's constitu
t1onal powers of military action.
In the April 13 LOS ANGELES TIMES, Michael Ledeen of the Center for Stra
tegic and International Studies in Washington D.C. took issue with those
claiming the "high moral ground" in Central America:
Once again abstract moralism threatens to triumph over our
national interests in Central America.•.. The Soviet-Cuban
Nicaraguan strategy in Central America is the same as that of
Syria's President Hafez Assad in Lebanon. That is to continue
fighting and hope that American will eventua�faaes-:- And Just
as in Lebanon--where every action of the Israeli or American
armed forces was subjected to minute scrutiny while the actions
of the PLO, Druze, Syrians and Shias received respectfully
detached coverage--so in Central Arnerica:
A foreign guerrilla
force on Salvadoran soil is treated with respect (and even