Negroponte Not to Blame for Excesses
Frank del Olmo’s character assassination of John Negroponte, the recently confirmed U.N. ambassador, was about as unfair and mean-spirited as it gets (Commentary, Sept. 30). Del Olmo blames Negroponte for what he calls “a dirty little war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.”
What Del Olmo calls a government was a vicious communist dictatorship with far more innocent blood on its hands than the Honduran Battalion 316, which Del Olmo suggests massacred 185 victims. What Del Olmo calls a dirty little war was an armed struggle to force the Soviet-backed Sandinista regime to hold free elections. Finally, elections were held and the Sandinistas lost overwhelmingly.
Working in the White House during that era, I watched our diplomats, such as Negroponte, do their best to maintain a standard of human rights in a chaotic time when communist insurgents were murdering thousands of people in Latin America. It was war. Admittedly, the fight at times was bloody and unsavory and our allies were, at times, less than admirable.
Blaming Negroponte for all of the excesses (which certainly happened) of those fighting the communists, like those in Battalion 316, is unfair and not accurate. Negroponte will prove to be a great ambassador to the U.N.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher
R-Huntington Beach
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