Violence Polarizes El Salvador

In response to Jeane Kirkpatrick’s column “Assault on a Democracy Condemns the Attackers,” Opinion Nov. 26:

Kirkpatrick fails to explain how the FMLN’s recent offensive--a military offensive, not a “campaign of violence,” despite Kirkpatrick’s overwrought rhetoric--necessitated the murder of six priests by the Salvadoran army. No, the priests were not “killed in the first days of fighting” as Kirkpatrick misleadingly states, as if the priests were somehow caught in the cross fire. They were executed in cold blood, Mafia-style, by Kirkpatrick’s ideological soul mates, the people she’s been lobbying for the last 10 years. So it shouldn’t surprise us that she may be a little sensitive and eager to cover their--and her--tracks, by blaming the victims.

My only question is, is she a registered, paid lobbyist for the Salvadoran death squads, or is she doing her advocacy out of conviction? I don’t know which is worse.

The fact that Kirkpatrick’s “ideas” have been taken seriously in this country--and that she has a platform from which to speak--is appalling testimony to not only the moral but the intellectual bankruptcy into which we as a society have fallen.

JONATHAN AURTHUR

Santa Monica