Misleading the Nation

Only 13 times in 30 years has a U. S. president called a joint session of Congress. It's the sort of occasion reserved for making proclamations, pushing policy, declaring national emergencies.

With House committees cutting in half his military aid proposal for El Salvador and threatening to cut off funding for covert CIA activities against Nicaragua, Reagan was feeling the pinch. On April 27 he pulled out all the stops and appealed to Congress to support his bellicose policy in Central America.

To convince the policy makers and his television audience of the crisis "next door," Reagan pointed out that El Salvador is closer to Texas than Texas is to Massachusetts, and Nicaragua is closer to Miami than Miami is to Washington, D.C.

But the man's sense of geography is not perfect. Launching into the most rhetorical part of his speech, he stated, "...let me set the record straight on Nicaragua, a country next to El Salvador." Perhaps Mr. Reagan should be set straight--Honduras separates the two countries; though if Reagan's perception were true it would certainly lend more credence to his theory that massive arms shipments are making their way from Nicaragua to El Salvador.

Perhaps he misread his map or his cue cards. But misreading a map is one thing, and misleading the nation is quite another, with consequences far more dangerous. Reagan's speech was an exercise in the latter. Distortions of the truth and outright lies were the backbone of his speech and form the very foundation of Reagan's policy in Central America.

He said of the small country whose brutal government we continue to fund, "Democracy is beginning to take root in El Salvador." Reagan applauded the people of El Salvador, who turned out on March 28 last year and bravely "trudged for miles" to "vote for freedom." He failed to mention that the opposition parties were denied participation under threat of death, that the cards of workers were stamped at the polls and those who did not vote could lose their jobs or be victims of violence, and that charges of fraud surrounded the elections. Reagan concluded that "we cannot turn our backs" on such courage and determination as exhibited by the Salvadoran voters, yet he seems quite willing to turn his back on the 30,000 Salvadorans killed by government security forces in the last three years.

Reagan's worst distortions were reserved for Nicaragua. He declared that "the people still have no freedom, no democratic rights and more poverty." Such assertions fly in the face of the evidence our delegation of evangelical leaders and press witnessed while in Nicaragua late last year, and even the opinion of the U.S. ambassador in Managua. To deny the massive increase in literacy, the improvements in health care and nutrition, and the high participation of the Nicaraguan people in their political process since the July, 1979 triumph of the Sandinistas is to be absolutely blind to the truth.

Reagan revealed the depth of his hypocrisy when he named the Sandinistas "Marxist-Leninist bands who believe war is an instrument of politics" and called violence their "most important export to the world." These are the words of the president of the world's largest international supplier of arms.

The U.S. government has been the primary promoter of war in Central America, pouring increasing amounts of weapons and military aid into a region already saturated with violence. It is upholding the government of El Salvador in its war against its own people, and inciting Honduras and Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries to war with the Sandinistas in an effort to overthrow their government.

The Reagan administration has continually refused negotiations and other political solutions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, including the rejection of several initiatives by other governments to mediate a negotiation process. A May 9 Nicaraguan appeal to the United Nations was rebuffed by U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, who denied that the United States is waging an undeclared war against Nicaragua but would not discuss the aid the Reagan administration is giving to the counterrevolutionaries, or contras.

Reagan exhibited a heartless lack of integrity when he stated in his speech that Nicaragua's leaders "like to pretend they are today being attacked by forces based in Honduras." It is by now common knowledge that the U.S. government is supplying arms, training, and logistical support to the growing contra forces--common knowledge, it seems, to everyone except Reagan and his colleagues.

Three days after his speech, we received confirmed reports from friends in Nicaragua that 1,200 troops had crossed over into Nicaragua from Honduras. They were a contra force made up primarily of former members of the feared National Guard of Anastasio Somoza, the barbaric dictator deposed by the Sandinistas in July, 1979, and backed up by Honduran troops.

The speech seems to have been the trigger for the contras to escalate their invasion, feeling assured of U.S. backing for their terrorist activities. The assessment from Nicaragua is that the contras are not prevailing militarily, but they have made the civilian population a target for the atrocities that were their tactics in the National Guard: rape, torture, castration, murder.

Gustavo Parajon, president of Nicaragua's Evangelical Committee for Aid and Development (CEPAD) and our host last December, spoke to us over the phone. As a Baptist pastor and medical doctor who coordinates a network of health clinics that serve Nicaragua's rural poor, Gustavo spoke very personally and emotionally about unarmed health workers and young people from evangelical churches near the Honduran border who have been senselessly and brutally killed. "We are burying three or four people a day now in Managua," he said in a pained voice, referring to friends who are being killed on the border and brought into the capital city for burial.

A front-page article in the May 8 Washington Post revealed that the contra army has swelled to 7,000 troops. The article outlined the history of the force, from CIA Director William Casey's first proposal for a highly trained commando force of 500 to strike at targets within Nicaragua, to the current army. It is a history of dishonesty on the part of the CIA in both its intentions and its reporting to Congress on its activity in Honduras.

Recent months have raised conflict between the Congress and the administration-backed CIA. On May 3 the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence supported the "Boland Amendment" and voted to cut off funding to the contras. Reagan responded by saying, "We'll keep right on fighting. If they [the committee members] want to be irresponsible, that's their business." He added that he would support overt aid to the force if covert aid were halted. Casey made the ludicrous comment that withdrawing funds from the contras would cause a "blood bath."

The corresponding Senate Committee voted to allow the "secret" war to continue only through September 30, to be reviewed at that time. A spokesman for the contras told a United Press International reporter that the deadline was acceptable: "There's no problem, we'll be in Managua in five months."

Reagan responded to these challenges to his policy with economic sanctions against Nicaragua. He made a decision on May 10 to eliminate Nicaragua's sugar sales to the United States, a loss which could have serious consequences for the struggling Nicaraguan economy. The sugar quota will be spread around the countries in Central America "friendly" to the United States.

Reagan's speech was an appeal for prompt approval of all his funding programs "so that the people of Central America can hold the line against externally supported aggression." The people of Central America know a truth that Reagan refuses to see--that the externally supported aggression of which they are victims is that being exported from their "neighbor" to the north, the United States--not from our "foe" in the East, the Soviet Union. They have suffered too long under U.S. economic domination and the brutal dictators who have been its enforcers.

With his speech, Reagan made his Central America policy central to his presidency and a test of congressional loyalty to his version of the truth. It was another evening at the mercy of the Great Obfuscator.

In what could have seemed a contradiction of the importance he attached to the issue, Reagan added parenthetically that he was really asking for so little--a mere $600 million for all of Central America, "less than one-tenth of what Americans will spend this year on coin-operated video games." But this was more a sorry statement on an overrated new American pastime than a comforting note about aid to Central America.

The heightened importance that Reagan put on his Central America policy is outdone only by the heightened sense of tragedy that now hangs over Central America. If the contra spokesman is right and his forces make it to Managua, a feat which could only be accomplished with strong U.S. support, we can expect the worst. Those who have done the most for Nicaragua's poor--government leaders with whom we talked, our friends at CEPAD, and others--will be the most endangered. Indeed, CEPAD Christians and clinic workers have already been the target of threats of violence over the contra radio station.

The Christians of Nicaragua pleaded with us not to allow our government to overthrow theirs and extinguish the progress and hope of the last four years. We have heard their plea. We stand with them in the bond of Christ that makes us one, as we stand resolute in our opposition to our government's policy against them and their government.

Joyce Hollyday was an associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.