Bush and Gorbachev’s Malta Summit

Gorbachev disappoints me by telling Bush he is pressuring his allies to stop sending arms to Salvadoran guerrillas. He should have lectured Bush on the right to revolt against inhumane rule (he might have quoted John Locke and the Federalist Papers on this), and on differences between real and phony democracies.

The Salvadoran rebels are struggling against one of the most brutal regimes in our century, which survives only by dint of U.S. aid. Even if their latest offensive was too destructive, it was clearly incited by brutal death squad murders, and it was the state, not the rebels, that bombed lower-class neighborhoods.

The Salvadoran “democracy,” even before it virtually suspended civil rights as a response to rebel attacks, was clearly less decent and legitimate than, for example, the Soviet-controlled regime in Poland. If Lech Walesa were a Salvadoran, he would have been killed long ago. The entire left wing was removed from contention by assassinations and intimidation right after Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election.

If the most badly oppressed victims of the world cannot find an ally in the world’s strongest Marxist regime, and the U.S. has long ignored its own roots in revolutionary activity, where can they turn for support and justice? Does military might now have a free hand to decree what is right, at least within the U.S. sphere of influence? Our kid-glove approach to tyranny and violence in Panama and Colombia provides further evidence of this being the case.

JOHN E. CHAPPELL JR.

San Luis Obispo