Word: salvadors
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...Administration's current policy, to prop up Duarte long enough to get some rudimentary democratic institutions and economic reforms in place, is in plenty of trouble on the ground in El Salvador; and it is couched in some of the more bellicose, almost hysterical idioms of Haigspeak back in Washington. But as long as the Administration seeks to curb the abuses of the regime and discourage the political ambitions of the military, providing American assistance against the guerrillas is a reasonable and responsible course. The humanitarian as well as geopolitical goal of the U.S. is to stop the escalation...
...involvement; the Administration would also have to contend with massive political and popular resistance in this country, based as much as anything on distaste for the type of regime the U.S. would be trying to rescue. Besides, the rationale for the Administration's ends and means in El Salvador rests on the reassurances, repeated by Haig's deputy Thomas Enders only last week, that the U.S. seeks a political, not a military, solution. Sending in troops would undercut the already precarious credibility of that policy...
Those and other relevant considerations would be, and should be, enough to give the Administration plenty of reason to look for alternatives to military intervention. But the hard fact is the U.S. cannot pre-emptively and categorically rule out more direct use of force in El Salvador, which is what some of Haig's cross-examiners in the Senate seemed to want him to do. Any nation, but especially a superpower, must reserve the option of armed action in defense of its vital interests. To foreclose that option in a nasty little crisis close to home would raise...
...response to the outrage expressed by many Americans and the daily horror stories emerging from El Salvador, Congress last year placed five conditions on U.S. military aid to El Salvador. On January 28, President Reagan, in what could only be termed a cynical move, certified that among other things, the Salvadoran government was making a concerted effort to protect the human rights of the Salvadoran people. Robert White, former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador under the Carter administration, put it best when he recently characterized the certification as the "[Reagan] Administration's whitewash of the brutal and corrupt Salvadoran military...
Examination of the Congressional conditions and the certification reveals the true state of affairs in El Salvador now and the futility of American policy there. We have all heard the figures before 2 percent of the population owns 60 percent of the land, 11,000 people died from political violence in 1981, a country with five million people has over 600,000 refugees In recent months, President Reagan has said that conditions in El Salvador are improving. The only substantiation offered for this claim is the Administration's pronouncement that only 6000 died in 1981 as opposed to more than...