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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, APRIL 20, 1984
admiration) by our journalists and members of Congress while our
soldiers and Salvadoran and Honduran allies get the full force of
our moral outrage.
If there is to be any hope for the democratic revolution in
Central America, this moral confusion must stop. In our search
for minute infractions on our side we have lost sight of the
major sins committed by our enemies.
It is they who have
installed the totalitarian dictatorships in Cuba and Nicaragua
while we are supporting the democratic revolution in El Salvador
and a similar transition in Honduras....
We are indeed guilty of a moral failure in Central America, but
it is not the one at which the moralists are currently pointing.
It is rather the failure to plainly and fully commit ourselves to
the triumph of democratic forces. We are prepared to bring all
kinds of leverage to bear on the government of El Salvador to end
the wanton killing by the death squads. This is entirely proper,
just as it is proper that we should be willing to share our wealth
with the people of Central America to alleviate hunger and
mi�ery.
But if the Cubans and Nicaraguans win the battle of El Salvador,
then not only will hunger and misery continue--where has commu
nism produced wealth and happiness for the masses?--but all hope
of freedom...will die. And we shall sadly add another country to
the 1ist that has seen Iran fall to the Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, Nicaragua to the Sandinistas and Lebanon to the
Syrians.
Mr. Ledeen's comments remind me of an interview I had with other officials
of the CSIS last May (PGR, June 3, 1983). One of them, Mike Moodie said
then that the budding crisis to America's south could become a big campaign
issue in 1984 and that "Central America has the potential to rip us apart
again."
The controversy over Central America, Mr. Moodie added, "feeds into
European relations," and from two opposite angles.
Leftists in Europe
believe the U.S. is all wrong in its approach to Central America, whereas
conservative Europeans wonder whether the U.S. any longer has the will to
stand up to Communist inroads. Thus the Central America crisis has direct
bearing on the growing trans-Atlantic estrangement between the U.s. and
Western Europe. The April 13 WALL STREET JOURNAL editorialized:
Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick has been in Europe telling NATO
allies that their "level of outrage far exceeds their level of
information" about Central America. The only thing wrong with
that statement is that it could apply almost equally well to the
U.S. Congress, which doesn't have the excuse of distance. But
the lecture seemed needed, nonetheless. When asked why the U.S.
cared so much about Central America, Mrs. Kirkpatrick said to buy
a globe.
The lecture was especially appropriate to Franee.
President
Francois Mitterrand.••proposed to send mine sweepers to help...
remove the mines laid by anti-Communist Nicaraguans with what was
later learned to be the support of the CIA•..• France and the