A Betrayal of Freedom

The following is just one of the many examples which prove that the Democrats are not fit to govern our foreign policy.

In 1979, Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Samoza was overthrown by a coalition comprising of democratic anti-Samoza groups and the National Sandinista Liberation Front, a communist guerilla force supplied and openly funded by the Cubans. After gaining power, the FSLN moved quickly to lock up, intimidate, or kill any democratic dissidents who might threaten their new power. A frightening experiment in tyranny had begun in our hemisphere.

From their first days in control of Nicaragua, the Sandinistas funneled money to communist terrorists in El Salvador (FMLN), and allowed the Soviets to use Nicaragua as a base of operations. Sandinista militants, due to their friendship with the PLO, received training in Fatah camps in Lebanon and Libya. Sandinista Patrick Arguello Ryan was killed hijacking an El Al jet en route to London; a huge dam in Nicaragua was promptly named after him.

Before their takeover in 1979, Sandinista terrorists set fire to a crowded synagogue in Managua (similar government sponsored anti-Semitism continued throughout the Sandinista reign). The Sandinistas either shut down or controlled TV and radio, censored and harassed the nation's leading newspaper, La Prensa- which had played a large role in unseating Samoza-, intimidated and harassed labor leaders, forced Catholic schools to teach Marxism, drafted seminarians into the army, and forbade the broadcast of religious messages on radio. Protestant churches were burned and pastors were arrested and tortured. The Moskito Indians, mostly Protestant, had their leaders replaced with Cubans and were forcibly taught Marxist propaganda. When this led to a revolt, innocent Moskito civilians were attacked and forced into concentration camps while their crops, churches, and houses were destroyed. Regarding the Indians, Tomas Borge, Sandinista Minister of the Interior and head of the secret police, stated, "The revolution can tolerate no exceptions".

In just four years, Nicaragua imprisoned 4,000 members of Samoza's National Guard (two thirds of the total number), and 6,500 political prisoners (a number second only to Cuba). Prisoners were tortured and/or executed and kept in cells that were too small to sit down in, were completely dark, and had no sanitation - often for more than a week. 95,000 Nicaraguans fled to Costa Rica, and thousands more made it to Honduras and the US. Almost three hundred thousand Nicaraguans fled their homes in the face of Sandinista tyranny.

America, under the Carter administration, funded the Sandinista regime with American aid throughout the first year and a half of its existence, yet this did not stop the commies from turning their nation into a mini-Cuba. In less than a year, their army had double the number of troops employed by Samoza, and by 1985 the number was up to 75,000 with more than 3,000 military advisors pouring in from Cuba, the USSR and eastern Europe (remember: a large communist army just a few hundred miles away from America is actively influenced and to some degree controlled by Havana and Moscow). Nicaragua, with a total population of less than three million, had a larger army than the entire country of Mexico, whose capitol city, alone, has more than three million persons.

Despite Democrat claims that arming the Contras created more Sandinistas, the arms buildup began shortly after they took power, long before the Contra revolt started and while Carter was still pumping them full of goodies. The Russians supplied Nicaragua with 300 tanks, 18 helicopters (including the HIND- the heavily armed helicopter used to decimate Afghanistan), artillery, patrol boats, and aircraft. With the aid of the USSR and Havana, Nicaragua built a military air base at Puenta Hueta, with a 10,000 foot runway - unrealistically long if only used by Nicaragua's tiny air force, but large enough to accommodate Soviet planes.

Ronald Reagan, concerned that a Soviet satellite was operating so close to our borders, subsequently expressed support for anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua, the Contras. This was part of his policy to defeat the Soviet Union: bleed them dry. We made sure that every action of the Soviets cost them more blood and treasure than they got out of it; in the end, this policy won big. We continued to mine Nicaragua's harbors with "firecracker mines" that did no real damage to ships. We also authorized some funding for the Contras, most of whom were either former Sandinistas who saw firsthand the tyranny Ortega and his ilk brought or ordinary peasants who didn't want to die at the hands of commies with Uzis.

The threat of a communist nation exporting revolution so near our borders did not stir any discontent among liberals, however, who soon began to congeal once again into the treason lobby. Hollywood darlings, Donk senators, and academic tinfoil hat wearers soon drifted off to see Daniel Ortega's socialist paradise. Susan Sontag, William Coffin, Richard Falk, Pete Seeger, Benjamin Spock, Noam Chomsky, Jessica Mitford, Tom Harkin, and John Kerry all went to Managua to meet with the dictator.

Adding insult to injury to the Nicaraguan people, those holding posts in both the treason lobby and the US government went on to give verbal aid to the Sandinistas.

In 1984, California Democrat and US Representative Matthew Martinez had this to say, "When the Nicaraguan leaders looked beyond the American style of democracy [note: we have a republic], to establish a unique, indigenous form of government tailored to accommodate the needs of that nation, the revolution was declared as having been lost to soviet-Cuban ideology and subsequently targeted for US supported subversion and terrorism. I say that this perception is wrong. Revolutions take time to mature..."

Apparently, turning a once relatively prosperous nation into a Marxist concentration camp is merely "tailoring government to the needs of a nation".

Patrick Leahy, the "Vermont Vermin," as he was known in his amateur wrestling days, said on the Senate floor, "I embarked on my fourth trip to Central America in the last six years convinced the policies of the Reagan administration in Central America are leading toward a major foreign policy disaster for our country... It is clearer than ever that the president's policy of military confrontation with Nicaragua is sinking the United States deeper and deeper into a quagmire..."

Ever heard that word, "quagmire," before? Liberals were up in arms that Ronald Reagan might try to (gasp!) achieve victory - VICTORY - over communism. For the party that, in its policy towards international communism, first advocated rollback over fighting, containment over rollback, detente over containment, and finally outright appeasement over detente, hearing the phrase "let's win" in foreign policy causes its members to spit their organic beet juice all over their New York Times.

In 1984, members of Congress signed a letter to Sandinista Dictator Daniel Ortega beginning with "Dear Commandante". They wrote, "We address this letter to you in a spirit of hopefulness and good will. As members of the US House of Representatives, we regret the fact that better relations to not exist between the United States and your country." The letter, in a show of the naivety of our Socialists in Congress, praised Ortega for promising, but not necessarily holding, free elections; promising, but not necessarily allowing, a reduction in press censorship; and promising, but in the end shooting those in support of and not allowing, freedom to assemble for political parties. The entire letter was designed to show the Nicaraguan communists (NiComs) that there were those in the US government who did not wish to see their power ended.

Aids to Senators Christopher "The U.S. is against the tide of history" Dodd and Harkin met with Sandinista officials to coach them on relations with the US Congress. Congressman David Bonior (D) had contacts with Sandinista officials that were actualy intercepted by US intelligence agencies (more than one!). Senator Harkin, showing Democrats' great respect for the liberties traditionally assumed to be possessed by man, met with the editor of La Prensa in Managua to urge him to accept his newspaper's censorship.

Dodd, in a fashion reminiscent of most liberals of the time, slandered the Contras as, "remnants of the old Samoza regime- a regime whose corruption, graft, torture, and despotism made it universally despised in Nicaragua." In its early days, the Contra leadership consisted of large numbers of National Guard officers (those who, in addition to their families, were not imprisoned or killed by the NiComs). Shortly thereafter, most of the leadership was made up of either former Sandinistas or pro-democratic former anti-Samozans. Fifty three percent were former civilians, twenty seven percent were former guardsmen, and twenty percent were former Sandinistas. In a rare spot of sanity, the otherwise liberal New Republic stated, "one doesn't raise an army of 15,000 peasants with promises of restoring a universally despised dictatorship."

Ole' NSA intercept Bonior was quoted as saying that, yes, the Sandinistas had made errors (see: genocide, repression, tyranny), "but if we measure the errors of Nicaragua, if we lay them side by side with what might be called the errors of our own administration, which seem greater to me, if we look at our conscience and assess the factors at play in Central America, who would we conclude poses the greatest threat to the stability of the region, Nicaragua or the present administration?"

Let's see, which is worse: a communist kleptocracy with ties to the Soviets, the Cubans, and the PLO; or Ronald Reagan, the man responsible for freeing millions from deathly tyranny? Hmm… I'm going to have to sleep on that one.

There was much talk that our resisting Central American communism would help spread what most Democrats seemed to want: Central American communism. Claiborne Pell, Michael Barnes, and Ted Kennedy all made statements to the effect that, "Our fighting an unpopular tyranny within Nicaragua will drive those who hate that tyranny to that tyranny." [Paraphrase - ed.] House Majority Leader and eventual Speaker Jim Wright stated, "Everyone with whom we talked believed... that a show of friendship [note: to tyrannical Marxist despots] would influence political developments for the better".

Does this sound familiar? Isn't this how Democrats talk about the war on terror? This "show of friendship" was soon demonstrated. While claiming to be "tough on communism", Democratic senators (those same folks from the same party that was responsible for losing half of Europe, all of China, half of Korea, all of Vietnam, an attempt to lose Afghanistan, Taiwan, El Salvador, and Grenada to communism, and the loss of Iran, Lebanon, Somalia, and Afghanistan to Islamist fascism) promptly voted down aid to the anti communist rebels, the Contras, in a vote of 248 to 180 (an event hailed by Cuban government controlled Havana Radio as a "catastrophic defeat for Reagan").

Shortly after aid to the Contras was voted down, Daniel Ortega took off on a trip to Moscow. Again, Chris "Tide of history" Dodd showed his insight when he said cheerfully, "Where does a Marxist go? Disney World?" Congressional Democrats, instead of actually showing some support for world freedom, then invoked the most fruitless tool ever used by the forces of good: negotiation. Sandinistas glibly supported talks as such endless debating kept those trying to topple their dictatorship from attaining aid.

And thus a conspiracy for liberty was born. Members of Reagan's staff, faced with what can be considered one of the most despicable and morally hollow acts in the history of the United States Congress, created a plan to support the Contras with private funds collected from patriotic Americans and foreign nations. Israel also sold arms to Iran and a small amount of the profits were diverted, both directly by Israel and indirectly through the US government, to the betrayed Contras. This was sound policy also since it helped the two most dangerous regimes in the Middle East, Iran and Iraq, kill each other's troops so that we would have to kill less of them down the line. Israel negotiated this deal with more liberal persons of the Iranian government, who then offered as a bonus to pressure Islamic Jihad to release American's kidnapped in Beirut. This was a masterful plan: it had the potential to help stop communist expansion on our doorstep and make defeating Islamic fascism a wee bit easier.

Democrats, faced with a plan by those wily Republicans to protect and expand Sweet Liberty Fair, threw a Red Diaper Baby Temper Tantrum (see: writing an op-ed for the New York Times). They attempted to convict members of the Reagan administration. The indictment went thusly: "In 1985, the defendants Oliver L. North, Richard V. Secord, and Albert Hakim and others commenced an enterprise that was intended, among other things, to support military and paramilitary operations in Nicaragua by the Contras and to conduct covert action operations." By Federal Law (The Boland Amendment), aiding anti-communist guerrillas seeking to free their country and defending the national security of the United States of America was technically illegal (this from the same party that says you can't shoot a mugger).

Fortunately, despite being betrayed by the Democrats in actions that can only be considered dastardly, the Contras were able to succeed militarily and politically, but only after the Sandinistas had five more years to rape the economy, culture, and people of Nicaragua, leaving each victim of such assault in shambles for years to come. Cornered by continued pressure from the ever-increasing Contras, the Sandinistas agreed to hold elections on February 25, 1990. Bombarded on all sides with vote observers, trickery was at least partially suppressed. All major media in the United States predicted and hoped for a huge Sandinista victory and began to preemptively blame such victory on the Reagan and Bush (41) administrations. After counting the votes, Violetta Chamorro, the editor of La Prensa- the newspaper that was pressured by Sen. Harkin to accept government censorship, won with a hefty 55 percent of the vote (even with voter fraud and intimidation carried out by the Sandinistas).

Had Democratic policies, mainly sitting back and watching the Iron Curtain be draped over the globe, succeeded, it is unlikely that Nicaragua would be free today. Remember that next time the treason lobby counsels accommodation.