A FALSE 'PARALLEL'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807400006-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: March 4, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807400006-0
C? aA.^? ru,."iJ 4 March 1986
IN THE NATION] Tom Wicker
A False `Parallel'
President Reagan, citing paral-
lels where none exist between
the Philippines and Nicaragua,
insisted to members of Congress in a
White House meeting that "we stood
for democracy in the Philippines; we
have to stand for democracy in Nica-
ragua and throughout Central Amer-
ica and in our hemisphere."
This "parallel" denigrates the re-
markable achievement of the Philip-
pine people in their spontaneous up-
rising against Ferdinand Marcos. It
is meaningless rhetoric if anyone
.thinks it should apply to the dicta-
torial Pinochet Government, though
Chile is "in our own hemisphere."
And It's only one more excuse with
which to pursue Mr. Reagan's patho-
logical fixation on the overthrow of
the Sandinistas - this time with $100
million of U.S. taxpayers' money -
because there are no parallels be-
tween the Philippines and Nicaragua.
In the former, a real tyrant,
through corruption, brutality and
murder, brought the population to the
boiling point; whatever charges may
be made against the Sandinistas, that
cannot be said of them. By massive
fraud and violence, the tyrant ignored
and reversed the clear will of the peo-
ple expressed in a national election;
whatever deficiencies may be laid to
the Nicaraguan election of 1984, noth-
ing in it remotely approached the out-
rage perpetrated by Mr. Marcos.
Filipinos who rose in their wrath to
rid their country o t e tyrant were
nTo o rgZzedan Hance by the
Agency or "cov-
Central intelligence
ert" from as ington. as were
.
the Nicaraguan "contras " And when
Filipiniad had enough, they swept
all before them, disclosing in a mat-
ter of days the rotten underpinnings
of the tyrant's regime; but after five
years of effort and millions of U.S.
dollars, the contras have yet to take
and hold a single town in Nicaragua,
or to set off the smallest ripple of
popular uprising anywhere in that un-
happy country. Filipinos staged a
Glorious Revolution; the contras
wage a minor guerrilla war, paid for
by U.S. taxpayers.
Now, the Administration - joined by
Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee - ad-
vances the proposition that $100 million
in additional aid, $70 million of it for
military equipment, must be supplied.
to the contras, so that they can force
the Sandinistas to participate in the so-
called Contadora negotiating process.
Aside from the fact that, with or
without U.S. aid, the contras have
shown no ability to impose Mr. Rea-
gan's will on Managua, this is a decep-
tive argument. Not only did the San-
dinistas agree to accept a Contadora
draft treaty in 1984, which the Reagan
Administration promptly rejected;
but just this year they also accepted a
statement of principles, advanced by
Guatemala and other nations in the
region, as a basis for a peaceful settle.
ment in Central America.
That statement called for the elimi-
nation of foreign military advisers
from the region, including Cuban and
Soviet-bloc personnel in Nicaragua.
Is the Reagan Administration willing
to negotiate on the basis of those prin-
ciples? No - it insists that the San-
dinistas must first negotiate with the
contras, although the contras as yet.
have earned no right whatever to sit
down as equals with the Sandinistas.
Secretary Shultz, meanwhile, contin-
ues to assert that Nicaragua subverts
other Latin countries with arms and.
military training. If that is even partly
so, it's all the more remarkable that
the foreign ministers of the eight most
Nicaragua
isn't like the
Philippines
important Latin nations - Brazil, Ar-
gentina, Mexico, Vepezuela, Colombia,
Peru, Uruguay and Panama - came td~;
Washington last month to urge Mr.
Shultz and the Administration (a) to
stop the contra war against Nicaragua,
and (b) to negotiate directly with the
Sandinistas. They got nowhere.
Mr. Shultz also has raised axaln the
tired old threat of a "Soviet and
Cuban base on the mainland of Latin
America." There's no evidence thwe
Moscow Aknts such a provocative
base: but if it does. the U.S. could
hardly stop it with $70 million in gums
and ammunition to a rastax rnua
band with no real itical support
l an es to bo the CT-.aand
the hated Somoza regime =he U3r
once backed. That the Soviet-ban ar-
ent ma be the Administration's
stroutes Do medicine suggeRts
how weak its case is.
Mr. Lugar concedes that the appro.
priation will have a tough time even
in the Republican Senate. In the
Democratic House, Representative
David Bonior of Michigan, chairman
of the Democrats' Task Force on
Nicaragua, sees a good chance to de-
feat it. That's why the Administration
is pulling out all stops. It aid to the
contras is cut off, Mr. Reagan will
have to turn to diplomacy, which
means accepting the Sandinistas in
some degree of power, or use U.S.
forces to overthrow them directly. ^
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807400006-0