THE LEFT'S SELECTIVE MORAL OUTRAGE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000201090019-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 25, 2010
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: August 15, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/25: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201090019-9
ARTICLE APPEARED WALL STREET JOURNAL
ON PAGE 15 August 1984
01
The Left's Selective Moral
utrage
By STEPHEN MORRIS
President Reagan's objective of trying
to prevent communist takeovers in Central
America is being most vigorously op-
posed-in the universities, the media, the
churches and Congress-by people who
were part of, or inspired by, the anti-war
movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The cur-
rent opponents adopt the same moralistic
postures as the "peace marchers" of the
past, and again contrast themselves with
the purportedly cruel and duplicitous ad-
ministrations they oppose.
The anti-war movement of America's
Vietnam era was never monolithic. But by
1970, a coalition of New Leftists and radi-
calized liberals had established its organi-
zational and ideological dominance within
the movement. Currently, it is most of
these same people who lead the militant
opposition to U.S. policy in Central Amer-
ica. The list of sponsors of United States
Out of Central America (USOCA)-a San
Francisco-based organization engaged in
agitation and propaganda on behalf of all
Central American revolutionaries-pro-
vides some of the best examples of this
political recycle.
The universities are once again the base
for the most intense assaults upon the pol-
icy of containing communism. USOCA's
Nobel Prize-winning scientists George
Wald and Linus Pauling sponsor shiploads
of supplies for the Sandinista regime in or-
der to demonstrate their "solidarity," as
they did more than a decade ago with
North Vietnam. Mr. Wald, who endorses
the claims of the Guatemalan communists
about repression in their country, has nev-
ertheless failed to protest against the mas-
sive repression in communist Vietnam,
and was silent about Khmer Rouge atroci-
ties in Cambodia while Po1 Pot was in
power.
Mr. Chomsky's Views
But USOCA's most influential academic
sponsor is the celebrated Massachusetts
Institute of Technology linguist Noam
Chomsky. As was the case during the era
of American involvement in Indochina,
Prof. Chomsky draws capacity crowds of
doting students to his lectures on campuses
across the nation. There, once again, he
denounces the real and imagined crimes of
I the U.S. and its clients, while portraying
their communist adversaries as morally
untarnished victims. Mr. Chomsky appar-
ently still believes, as he wrote in 1979,
that "Washington has become the torture
and political murder capital of the world."
Before undemurring audiences, he identi-
fies the views of intellectuals who support
a resolutely anticommunist policy in Cen-
tral America-such as Norman Podhoretz,
the Jewish neoconservative editor of com-
mentary, and the Jewish editors of the lib-
eral New Republic-with the views of the
Nazis.
It is thus interesting to look back on Mr.
Chomsky's attitude to the "peacetime"
record of the last communist revolutions
he supported-in Indochina. In various ar-
ticles, books and speeches, Mr. Chomsky
challenged firsthand accounts of a Vietna-
mese gulag of prisons, "reeducation
camps" and New Economic Zones.
At a I.l ne when perhaps mph than a
MORE Cambodians had died at the hands
o ruling communist revolutionaries, he
also attempted to discredit reports of a
Cambodian holocaust, based on refugee
testimon , as "distortions at fourth hand."
Mr. Chomskv suspected Thai or Central In-
to tgence Agency connivance in fabricat_
g ing many of these stories. He was more
pressed with the accounts of veteran
pro-Hanoi researchers, such as Ben Kier-
nan, Michael Vickery and Institute for Pol-
icy Studies associate D. Gareth Porter
who, using largely communist sources, tes-
tified before a congressional subcommittee
in May 197:
.. the notion that the leadership of
Democratic Kampuchea adopted a policy
of physically eliminating whole classes of
people, of purging anyone who was con-
nected with the Lon No] government, or
punishing the entire urban population by
putting them to work in the countryside
after the 'death march' from the cities, is
a myth... .
Mr. Chomsky continued to vilify critics
of the Khmer Rouge for several more
years. But the campaign of holocaust de-
nial by other anti-war academics, includ-
ing IPS associates, suddenly wound down form), imagine Oxfam-America to be non-
in 1978. In that year the Vietnamese and partisan. In fact Oxfam-America engages
Cambodian communists openly announced in political advocacy. Its publications dem-
th
i
di
r
e
sagreement with one another, the
result being an escalating border war.
Most Western anti-war activists suddenly
began to develop new perspectives on the
Khmer Rouge. A mini-replay of the Sino-
Soviet dispute had forced "progressives"
to choose sides. Most chose Hanoi.
Along with the radical academics, the
"progressive" Protestant church groups-
those influenced by "liberation" theology-
today play an important role in supporting
the communists in Central America. They
funnel money to pro-Sandinista organiza-
tions inside Nicaragua, and provide impor-
tant propaganda work in the U.S. on behalf
of the Sandinista regime, and the Salva-
doran and Guatemalan insurgents.
These same progressive church circles.
especially the rterican Friends' Service
Committee, the Mennpnite Central Corr>i
mittee, the Methodist office for the United
ations and the Church World Service,
were activ-e io east anti-war movement.
flieyha`ve remained
unswerving a vocates
o Vietnamese communist foreign Doi v.
When the pacifist Joan Baez protested
against unman rig isolations in
Peiname AFSC disseminated a docu-
men , ortgina tng in Havana, a tshon-
es y smeared one of
sources (Doan Van Toat) as a stooge of
Nguyen Van Thieu and the CIA.
The "progressive" church activists
have also given money to Hanoi for the
building of New Economic Zones-the Viet-
namese equivalent of Siberian exile-to
which Hanoi deports people it considers po-
litically or socially undesirable.
During the period 1975-77, when the
Khmer Rouge was publicly on good terms
with Hanoi, the "progressive" Protestants
were silent about the regime. But as with
the academic and political communities,
after the split between the Indochinese
communists, these same people suddenly
became fervent critics of the "Pol Pot
genocidal regime." In October 1980, after
the U.N. had already condemned the Viet-
namese invasion of Cambodia, representa-
tives of the major "progressive" Protes-
tant groups held a welcoming reception for
the Vietnamese foreign minister, Nguyen
Co Thach, at the U.N. and expressed their
"solidarity."
The influence of anti-war movement id-
eology has also made itself felt within sec-
ular "relief" agencies. The most signifi-
cant of these is Oxfam-America, an organi-
zation that describes its purpose as "inter-
national development and disaster relief."
Most Americans, including Sen. Edward
Kennedy (who has spoken on its plat-
onstrate not merely hostility to the Guate-
malan government but sympathy with the
cause of Guatemalan communist guer-
rillas. Oxfam-America provides aid to or-
ganizations controlled by the communist
regime in,Nicaragua.
Oxfam-America's conception of "inter-
national development and disaster relief"
is even more starkly brought out by its
Continued
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