Time To Stop Transfering Blame To Sandinistas

One of the most disturbing features of the recent public debate over American aid to the contra rebels trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan government is the way the media and liberal opposition permit the Reagan administration and other conservatives to define the terms of that debate. For example, the administration stresses again and again how pernicious the Sandinista government is. It is represented not only as a threat to U.S. interests, but as an oppressor of the Nicaraguan people, who are supposedly deprived by the Sandinistas of their liberty. The liberal opposition in the U.S. proceeds to acknowledge that the Sandinistas are a bad lot, but then offers various reasons why we should not be in the business of trying to overthrow them. Seldom do we hear anyone in the Congress or the media question the bleak portrait of the Sandinista government with which most Americans are familiar.

Rarely is it pointed out in the mainstream press, for example, that after decades of brutal repression under the U.S backed governments of the hated Somoza family, the Nicaraguans are at last being educated and adequately fed with the produce of their own land and labor. Who in the national spotlight has ever commented that the Sandinistas have brought greater social and economic freedom to the poor majority in Nicaragua than have most, if not all of the U.S backed governments elsewhere in Latin America?

Similarly, it is rarely pointed out by journalists, columnists, newscasters, or political leaders that the mercenaries that the Reagan administration and other conservatives call "freedom fighters" do not presume to achieve their objectives by overwhelming the Nicaraguan military, but through the systematic terrorization, torture, rape and murder of innocent Nicaraguan civilians. Who in the public eye has persuasively countered the Reagan administration's campaign of disinformation by stating that the method of warfare we as a nation are aiding and abetting is grossly immoral, that thousands of men, women, and children have been victims of contra atrocities? We are told incessantly however, by conservative political leaders, that these same contras will free Nicaragua and make it a better place for Nicaraguans to live.

A WUOM news report a few days after the House approval of $100 million in contra aid (June 25) may serve to illustrate what I have discussed above. Two children had recently been killed by a contra attack on a Nicaraguan co-op and, according to the report, a State Department spokesperson had just publicly pleaded with the Nicaraguan government to stop sending children to areas of contra activity. Afterwards I did not hear or read anyone comment that Nicaragua is not Iran, that children live in co-ops, or that blame for contra atrocities cannot be transferred to the Nicaraguan government. It is time for someone in the public spotlight to speak up.

Thomas Lynn

Ann Arbor, MI