[Peace-discuss] Bush allies with Communists

[C. G. Estabrook]

Quite right. In February of 1990, during the Bush-1 administration,
Nicaragua held its second national election following the 1979 revolution.
(The Sandinista party won a free election in 1984, despite US attempts to
disrupt it.) The US had been attacking the country with a terrorist army
("Contras") that killed 30,000 people, often "soft targets," as the US
advised -- teachers, aid workers, etc. -- while avoiding the Nicaraguan
army.

In 1990 the Sandinistas lost to the "United Nicaraguan Opposition," an
alliance of 14 opposition parties ranging from the ultra-conservative
business organization COSEP to the Nicaraguan Communist Party. UNO's
candidate, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, replaced Daniel Ortega as
president of Nicaragua.

Chomsky explained at the time what had happened:

"... we used diplomatic fakery to crush Nicaragua. As Tony Avirgan wrote
in the Costa Rican journal Mesoamerica, 'the Sandinistas fell for a scam
perpetrated by Costa Rican president Oscar Arias and the other Central
American Presidents, which cost them the February [1990] elections.'

"For Nicaragua, the peace plan of August 1987 was a good deal, Avrigan
wrote: they would move the scheduled national elections forward by a few
months and allow international observation, as they had in 1984, 'in
exchange for having the contras demobilized and the war brought to an
end....' The Nicaraguan government did what it was required to do under
the peace plan, but no one else paid the slightest attention to it.

"Arias, the White House and Congress never had the slightest intention of
implementing any aspect of the plan. The US virtually tripled CIA supply
nights to the contras. Within a couple of months the peace plan was
totally dead. As the election campaign opened, the US made it clear that
the embargo that was strangling the country and the contra terror would
continue if the Sandinistas won the election. You have to be some kind of
Nazi or unreconstructed Stalinist to regard an election conducted under
such conditions as free and fair -- and south of the border, few succumbed
to such delusions.

"If anything like that were ever done by our enemies ... I leave the media
reaction to your imagination. The amazing part of it was that the
Sandinistas still got 40% of the vote, while New York Times headlines
proclaimed that Americans were 'United in Joy' over this 'Victory for US
Fair Play.'

"US achievements in Central America in the past fifteen years are a major
tragedy, not just because of the appalling human cost, but be cause a
decade ago there were prospects for real progress towards meaningful
democracy and meeting human needs, with early successes in El Salvador,
Guatemala and Nicaragua.

"These efforts might have worked and might have taught useful lessons to
others plagued with similar problems -- which, of course, was exactly what
US planners feared. The threat has been successfully aborted, perhaps
forever."

See also <http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/dd/dd-c09-s07.html>. --CGE


On Mon, 10 May 2004, Ricky Baldwin wrote:

> Excellent point, and I'm sorry I missed the talks.
> 
> I also seem to recall an earlier "anti-Communist" administration
> allying itself with the Communist party in Nicaragua to defeat the
> Sandinistas, yes?
> 
> Ricky
> --- "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu>
> wrote:
> > [In some recent talks at Channing-Murray I pointed
> > out that the 50-year US
> > crusade against Communism arose not from the the
> > ideological reasons
> > offered to generations of Americans but because
> > self-styled Communist
> > states might refuse "to complement the industrial
> > economies of the West,"
> > in the words of a Eisenhower-era government
> > analysis. That threat being
> > over, the US finds it expedient to promote Communist
> > parties in pursuit of
> > its goals, which haven't changed since Eisenhower's
> > time, since they
> > represent continuing interests. The following is
> > from yesterday's NY
> > Times.  --CGE]
> > 
> > 	May 9, 2004
> > 	THE TRANSITION
> > 	U.S. Presses U.N. on Role in Iraq for Politicians
> > 	By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
> > 
> > ASHINGTON, May 8 -- The Bush administration is
> > pressing the United
> > Nations envoy to change his proposal for a
> > transitional Iraqi government
> > once self-rule is returned on June 30, Iraqi and
> > administration officials
> > say.
> > 
> > Instead of a government that is nonpolitical, the
> > administration is
> > pushing for one that gives prominent roles to people
> > with ties to
> > political parties, the officials say.
> > 
> > ...[12 paragraphs later]
> > 
> > Iraqi officials who have been in close contact with
> > Washington say the
> > parties that will have to be represented in the
> > caretaker government
> > include the Supreme Council for the Islamic
> > Revolution in Iraq, which has
> > close ties to Iran, and Dawa, another influential
> > Shiite group. The
> > Communist Party is also likely to be represented,
> > they said.
> > 
> > ...
> >