The General Lays It on the Line

Over the 10 years of bloody civil war in El Salvador, more than one military expert has warned that the conflict is a stalemate that neither side can win. Now, Gen. Maxwell R. Thurman has issued the same warning, a view that carries special authority because it was Thurman who led U.S. troops into Panama.

As head of the U.S. Southern Command, Thurman also is commander of American military advisers based in El Salvador, the first of whom arrived in 1981 to help the government defeat tough and persistent leftist guerrillas. Thurman’s remarks were made before a congressional hearing last week. When asked if the nearly 60,000-man Salvadoran army could beat the insurgents, who number only a few thousand but have considerable popular support, Thurman said flatly, “I think they will not be able to do that.”

It was one of the most blunt assessments ever made about El Salvador by an American official, but it was not the first. A team of U.S. Army colonels reached a similar conclusion in a study done at Harvard University two years ago. And there have been members of the U.S. Military Advisory Group in El Salvador itself who returned to Washington saying the same thing privately.

Those grim assessments have had an impact in Washington. The Bush Administration wants to find a way to revive stalled peace negotiations between the government of President Alfredo Cristiani and the rebel Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front. Cristiani, whose right-wing Arena party once called for victory, says he wants the peace talks to start again, and so do leaders of the five guerrilla factions in the FMLN.

The only place the harsh reality of a battlefield stalemate has not yet been accepted is in the comandancia of the Salvadoran military. The generals and colonels there still think they can win the war. But they can’t do that without at least the $1 million in U.S. military aid they now get every day. That’s why, when Congress votes to renew that aid--as it is likely to do very soon--it must add conditions like those proposed by Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) that would pressure the Salvadoran military to let Cristiani and other civilian leaders negotiate peace. Without a stick to back up the carrot of U.S. aid, the Salvadoran generals may never face the fact that their dreams of victory are no more than dreams.