Nicaragua

LONDON – Can one imagine when (and if) Daniel Ortega Saavedra and his ex-revolutionary Sandinistas are swept back into office in next Sunday’s general election the late U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, saying calmly from his grave, “Here we go again”, and then, after a thoughtful pause, “So what?” It was Mr Reagan, after all, who said of the Sandinista regime, “If we ignore it will spread and become a mortal threat to the entire New World”. The Sandinistas were “just two days drive from Harlingen, Texas” and, as Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, added,“Defending the mainland ranks above all other priorities.” Rhetoric like this cost Central America- there were also left/right civil wars in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras- hundreds of thousands of lives and left villages and towns decimated. They were unnecessary wars and the U.S. had no business supporting a small, unyielding, land-owning class against a small minority...

LONDON – At least ex-president Ronald Reagan is too ill to feel the pain. If Daniel Ortega Saavedra and his colleagues from the revolutionary Sandinista movement are swept back into power in the coming general election it won’t be Reagan’s feathers he ruffles. Still there are enough old Central American warriors in the top echelons of the Bush government- Elliott Abrams in the White House, for example- who perhaps will not be able to stop their pain reflexes working and once again there will be pressure for America to send in the CIA to head off an apparently unfriendly government. How will they put it? “If we will ignore the malignancy of Nicaragua it will spread and become a mortal threat to the entire New World” to quote President Reagan. Or again, “The Sandinistas are just two days drive from Harlingen, Texas”. Or, as his Secretary of Defence, Caspar Weinberger...