From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Subject: Nicaragua Series -- comments and replies (4/4 ; conclusion)
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 02:28:07 GMT


Nicaragua Series -- comments and replies (4/4 ; conclusion)

The previous part opened with

    Which brings about further insights about the "condemnation"
    Scherzer et al have for the contras, which we can address below in
    their full glory after spending a few moments to dispense with the
    pretense of concern for insufficient condemnation of terror by the
    dissidents.

and spent more than "a few moments" on this so that we may finally
return to the "condemnation" of the contras.

    "Anyone who pretends that Nicaragua under the Sandinistas was
    anywhere *near* comparable to El Salvador or Guatemala (or indeed
    Honduras) is a fanatic ideologue [GET on AI_REPT ELSALV and
    LAT-AMER HMNRTS90 suffices], and even that is too kind, since had
    the Nicaragua in question been, in another world, *identical* to a
    death-squad regime like those, sane people would not be (and in
    the present tense, are not) advocating CIA organizing, training,
    and arming of a band of terrorists to murder, torture, rape, and
    blow up agricultural cooperatives, hospitals, schools, etc, any
    more than principled, consistent dissidents advocate that the U.S.
    today do this to Guatemala et al; meanwhile the advocates of U.S.
    terrorism are "consistent" because they "condemn" the atrocities
    of the proxy Somozist terrorist army breaking U.S. and
    international law and participating in a deliberated and "planned
    strategy" of murder mutilation and rape against the Nicaraguan
    people; i.e., "condemn" by supporting precisely this process, the
    contra war, albeit with more care, please, in this massive
    exercise in state terrorism, for human rights. In parallel yet
    again, either these apologists for U.S. terrorism also call for
    the mining of U.S.  harbors, funding for terrorists to attack U.S.
    farmers, teachers, and health-workers, kidnapping, raping, etc (in
    which case they are consistent at least but not the sort of folks
    we'd probably want to bother having discussions with) or else
    their true colors shine as clear as ever."

	[Based on email sent last week]


So we see the "condemnation" of the contras for what it is:    

*** Recall that we are talking about a band of thugs organized from
the remnants of the infamous National Guard supported by Washington
under the Somoza family dictatorships -- in fact the U.S. Congress
found in a study that 46 out of 48 contra leaders were former members
of Somoza's arms of brutality, the National Guard [use GET with
WHO-WERE CONTRAS]

*** Recall that the "routine" murder and kidnapping and torture of
civilians described by the human rights groups are part of a "planned
strategy of terrorism" against the Nicaraguan population; not a rather
extreme case of human rights abuses on one side of a war but as a
conscious "strategy" to destroy the achievements of the revolution, in
health care, education, land reform, and so on, which was both
responsible for popular support for the Sandinistas and the very roots
of the struggle to topple the U.S.-backed dictatorship in 1979. From
internal documents by Washington to public bragging by contra leader
Adolfo Calero who considered perfectly "legitimate" murderous attacks
by his contra bands against peasant run cooperatives -- recall that
the Totalitarian Sandinistas armed these peasants by widely
distributing to them guns so that they could defend themselves from
these Freedom Fighters -- so that it is clear enough who contras were,
and what their deliberate strategy and their very *purpose* behind the
consistent "planned strategy of terrorism", not merely the documentary
evidence of a massive number of "instances" of terrorism by the
contras but their very reason for being.

All of which helps us frame the "condemnation" of the contras by those
who explain that they would like to have "trained" the these bandits
-- whose very purpose, tactics, and strategy was based on terrorizing
the Nicaraguan population into abandoning their participation in any
aspect of the revolution or self-betterment for which they overthrew
the Somoza dynasty under the Good Old Days for the Washington, which
had no problems with the massive repression employed to maintain that
Model -- to have been *more careful about their human rights record* as
they pursue their noble goals.

It is not difficult to imagine a Pravda columnist explaining -- indeed
even believing, on some level -- their most highly principled
"condemnation of" human rights abuses by a KGB-created, trained,
armed, and directed band of terrorists whose documented and stated
aims are to terrorize the population in a country which overthrew a
dictatorship which had been supported by the USSR for the previous 45
years, and to focus on "soft targets" (schools, health care centers,
and so on) as a means to achieve their aims of restoring the Good Old
Days, the Pravda columnist explaining how this policy of aggression,
illegality, and terrorism, should have been carried out with more
care, with better KGB training of the "proxy force" in human rights
(and perhaps providing more humane assassination manuals by the KGB)
so that these former members of the National Communist Guard, the
instrument of the 45-year Moscow-backed dictatorship finally
overthrown by the revolution, could more kindly and gently achieve
their noble aims.


    ======================================
    To get a file named FILE NAME from the
    archiver (files are two words  separa-
    ted by a space), send the 1-line message

    GET FILE NAME ACTIV-L

    to: LISTSERV@UMCVMB.BITNET
    [or: LISTSERV@UMCVMB.MISSOURI.EDU]
    ======================================

    Use GET with the file ACTIV-L ARCHIVE for a listing of
    files available with the GET command.

e.g., send GET ACTIV-L ARCHIVE ACTIV-L to LISTSERV@UMCVMB.BITNET to be
emailed the index of archived files.