Better Than Bullets

With what looks to be the entire Reagan Administration lobbying Congress for $100 million for Nicaragua’s rebel forces, the so-called contras, the rhetoric on both sides is getting hot enough to smoke.

So it is useful to ponder the thoughtful words of neutral observers who point out that while the Sandinistas are not the cruel communist tyrants that President Reagan loves to lambaste, their government is far from a model Third World democracy.

A report published this week by the human-rights organization Americas Watch, for example, says that the Sandinistas, the contras and the Reagan Administration all share equal blame for “a worsening human-rights situation” in Nicaragua. Americas Watch accuses Sandinista security forces of several murders and of suppressing legitimate dissent inside Nicaragua, particularly within the Roman CaTholic Church. The contras were blamed for 90 murders, and the United States is faulted for abetting crimes by the insurgents. The findings are similar to those of another human-rights-in-Nicaragua study published in February by Amnesty International.

Some apologists for the Sandinistas argue that their repressive measures are defensive actions of a small country besieged by a powerful neighbor, but there is more to it than that. The Sandinistas are Marxists, after all, and they are consolidating control over Nicaragua in a familiar Marxist fashion. It has always been in the cards that peasant farmers and businessmen in a staunchly Roman Catholic country like Nicaragua would resist such change.

The disillusionment of Nicaragua’s man-on-the-street with the revolution is exhaustively documented in an article by Robert S. Leiken, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in the most recent New York Review of Books. Leiken’s research offers no comfort to Reagan and other contra supporters, however. He concludes that the true Nicaraguan opposition--in the church, labor unions and rural areas--has not been mobilized by the contras because their leadership is dominated by men linked to ousted dictator Anastasio Somoza.

In testimony before Congress on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger dismissed the fact that America’s Latin American allies do not support Reagan’s contra aid proposal with the claim that they have been intimidated by Nicaragua’s military buildup. That’s rubbish.

Latin leaders and diplomats have no illusions about the Sandinistas. But they think that diplomatic and economic pressure from Nicaragua’s neighbors will temper the revolutionary zeal of the Sandinistas more effectively than armed force, especially force applied from the United States. Countries like Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Panama, all of which helped the Sandinistas bring down Somoza, have now joined together in the Contadora Group to apply that pressure.

The Contadora Group wants a peaceful and stable Central America, and is trying to negotiate a peace treaty for Nicaragua and the other nations of the region as a first step toward that goal. But even the first step won’t be taken while Reagan sends arms and ammunition to the contras and rants against the Sandinistas. The Nicaraguans will not let down their guard while they believe that U.S. military intervention, which has happened twice before in their country’s history, is just around the corner.

That is why Congress must derail the Administration’s contra crusade. It got off to a good start on Wednesday, when both the House Intelligence Committee and the Foreign Affairs subcommittee for the Western Hemisphere voted against the contra aid package.