A Leopard Can't Change It's Spots

Let's pause the DNC/Kerry campaign denouncements of Allawi and dismal Iraqi election scenarios and fire up the way-back machine to Nicaragua and El Salvador 1982-85, shall we?

WAAAAmmmmmm.... Oh My, Contras, Commies and Donks!

Kerry adamantly opposed President Reagan's policy of preventing a communist takeover of Central America. Evidence showed that communist Cuba and the then-Soviet Union were coordinating a massive assault on the Western hemisphere. Reagan had set them back with the liberation of Grenada and the overthrow of a communist gang there. He was also supporting a resistance movement, known as the Contras, opposing the communist Sandinistas who had taken control of Nicaragua.

In an article in the American Spectator, entitled, "The Bolshevik in Kerry," George Neumayr wrote, "Kerry's limousine liberation theology led him into one of the most embarrassing moments of his early Senate career—his disastrous Neville Chamberlain-style diplomacy with Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega. Shortly after becoming a Senator, Kerry took off for Nicaragua with Tom Harkin on a free-lancing fact-finding tour, the purpose of which was to stymie congressional support for the Contras by 'finding' that the Sandinistas weren't such bad guys after all."

An interesting sidebar to the above quoted article is that the heavy hand of the MSM was clearly seen white-washing Kerry's unpalatable views. Different leopard, same spots.

Shortly after being sworn as a senator, Kerry and Tom Harkin went to Managua and held secret talks with Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega. He came back with a plan that didn’t include any dialogue with the unified democratic opposition.

On the floor of the Senate in an emotional April 23 speech, Kerry presented the document as something new.

"I share with this body the aide-mémoire which was presented to us by President Ortega," he told his colleagues -- without mentioning his own role and that of his aide McCall in its drafting.

He took Ortega's word for everything.

"Here," he pronounced to the Senate, "is a guarantee of the security interest of the United States."

Kerry continued: "My generation, a lot of us grew up with the phrase 'give peace a chance' as part of a song that captured a lot of people's imagination. I hope that the president of the United States will give peace a chance."

Of course the usual suspects Sens. Edward Kennedy and Robert Byrd heaped praise on Kerry after the Managua trip. When criticism rained down on Kerry and Sen. Barry Goldwater assailed his plan, what was Kerry's response?

Kerry shot back that he was "a veteran of Vietnam who fought and was wounded in that conflict."

Had we followed Kerry's advice, Nicaragua, El Salvador and perhaps even Mexico might be communist today. But no thanks to Kerry, the communist insurgency in El Salvador collapsed and assumed the role of a political opposition party.

Kerry's continues to provide aid and comfort to enemies of the United States by allowing himself to be used in order to win political battles at home.

David Brock sees similarities between Kerry's view of El Salvador then and Iraq now:

The Insurgency Buster

Conditions were horrible when Salvadorans went to the polls on March 28, 1982. The country was in the midst of a civil war that would take 75,000 lives. An insurgent army controlled about a third of the nation's territory. Just before election day, the insurgents stepped up their terror campaign. They attacked the National Palace, staged highway assaults that cut the nation in two and blew up schools that were to be polling places.

Yet voters came out in the hundreds of thousands. In some towns, they had to duck beneath sniper fire to get to the polls. In San Salvador, a bomb went off near a line of people waiting outside a polling station. The people scattered, then the line reformed. "This nation may be falling apart," one voter told The Christian Science Monitor, "but by voting we may help to hold it together."

Conditions were scarcely better in 1984, when Salvadorans got to vote again. Nearly a fifth of the municipalities were not able to participate in the elections because they were under guerrilla control. The insurgents mined the roads to cut off bus service to 40 percent of the country. Twenty bombs were planted around the town of San Miguel. Once again, people voted with the sound of howitzers in the background.

Yet these elections proved how resilient democracy is, how even in the most chaotic circumstances, meaningful elections can be held.

Reagan was right, Kerry was wrong.

Kerry is still wrong; the wrong candidate, with the wrong plan, for the wrong time.

UPDATE: Deacon reached the same conclusion.

Posted by feste at September 28, 2004 02:10 PM | TrackBack