Word: salvadors
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Nevertheless, due to the efforts of American groups sympathetic to the guerrillas' cause, the "El Salvador Dissent Paper" began to circulate widely in Europe and, unlike the capital's conscientious reporters, foreign journalists were not afraid to print the paper's contents. In fact, the report received a great deal of coverage during the Madrid Peace Conference, when two members of the leftist front debated two American government land-reform experts who worked in El Salvador. Before long, Carter's administration had to answer to its allies for the document's charges, and, according to one State Department official...
...commotion in the foreign press and serving as ammunition for radical journals. In hushed voices, and definitely off-the-record, top State Department officials would tell journalists the whole thing was an effort by the KBG to discredit Carter's foreign policy, put the leftiests in power in El Salvador, and spread the red tide in Latin America. Soon the explanation grew to include that the Soviets were using this report to cut off our oil lines to Mexico, After a while no Communist was exempt from involvement with the paper. Were the Cubans involved? "Yeah, yeah, that sounds good...
Perhaps government officials actually believed that only Communists could pose the questions raised in the report. The Carter administration's escalation of aid to El Salvador and its systematic dismissal of dissenting views within the State Department--even those of former Secretary of State Edmund Muskie who advised against resumption of support after the murder of the nuns--makes all too possible this dangerous level of ignorance. But when members of Congress, including Massachussetts' Barney Frank, and vocal solidarity organizations were calling for change in policy toward El Salvador, would it take KGB agents to articulate it? More likely than...
Earlier this week Reagan proved that he does not intend to probe the hypocrisy and danger of U.S. involvement in El Salvador. By firing Ambassador Robert White--ostensibly withdrawn from the country to Washington D.C. for "consultations"--Reagan demonstrated that he will not tolerate dissent on U.S. policy from an American official. Like his conservative advisor, U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, Reagan believes it is wise to support "mildly" repressive regimes, and, perhaps, if you close an eye and both ears, El Salvador's junta--responsible for 10,000 political murders last year--is "mildly" repressive...
...White represents more than a dangerous ignorance of sound foreign policy in Central America: it marks the end of an era in which human rights received, at least, some sort of lip service from the government. This is not to say that White advanced the cause of El Salvador's poor; he did not do nearly as much as he might have. But Reagan's elimination of any voice of reason--one that might raise the issue of foreign policy guided by the concerns of human life--is gone. And with it, the possibility that the United States extricate itself...