Murder in El Salvador

Another Massachusetts bleeding heart heard from, again, on El Salvador! I refer, of course, to Goodwin. “Naturally” it’s the fault of the United States that El Salvador and Nicaragua and Panama and Cuba, ad infinitum, are the way they are.

Goodwin fails to mention the fact that when the election in El Salvador was called, the guerrillas decided it was crooked (they knew they couldn’t get the people to support them so they denounced the election) and threatened to kill the very people they claim to represent if these people tried to vote! Where was Goodwin’s denunciation of the guerrillas? The vote went ahead and a larger percentage of eligible voters turned out than ever do in America. The people had a choice in the election and picked Alfredo Cristiani. Goodwin’s implication that the United States had rigged the election is slanderous, but typical of the leftists Goodwin represents.

His credentials as assistant to both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson should label him as basically incompetent by itself. The gist of Goodwin’s article is really this: Marxism will triumph in Central America no matter what the United States does, so abandon the region and cut our losses.

I hate to bring up the bugaboo of the 1960s--the domino theory--pooh-poohed by liberals like Goodwin, but it is happening right now in Central America. Nicaragua was first. Abandoning the region as Goodwin wants means that El Salvador will fall, then Honduras. Mexico is already so anti-American that even the slightest push from the south will send it over the edge.

Of course, if that happens Goodwin and his cronies will blame “the U.S. Administration.” Wake up Dick, you can’t have it both ways!

MICHAEL V. STRATTON

Brea