After my tour in the U.S. Air Force with the 2064th Communications Squadron on Shemya Island and the 964th Airborne Warning & Control Squadron at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, I returned to Ohio and enrolled in college to study history. Each year during my undergraduate days at Walsh University, the Institute for Justice and Peace would sponsor visiting speakers to address a meeting of the Walsh University Peace Academy. Memorable among these speakers was Fr. Bernard Suvil, a Catholic priest serving as a missionary in Nicaragua who was on sabbatical leave while studying at the Washington Theological Union. Originally from the Diocese of Greensburg, PA, he spoke to us on December 5th, 1986. (see
www.walsh.edu)
Next, Fr. Survil said this billionaire had a gang down there called the Contras, and that the Contras were getting money from American tax victims to buy arms. He said where the Contras encountered financial shortfalls, the CIA would step in with direct contributions of their own. The ability of the billionaire to involve the U.S. government in his private war particularly disturbed this Catholic missionary.
Fr. Survil said that the U.S. government's support of the of the Contras in Nicaragua represented a declaration of war against the Nicaraguan people. He particularly detested the covert funneling of money to the Contras from the covert sale of weapons to Iran, saying that it was the "intent of President Reagan to cause pain to the Nicaraguan people, even at the expense of deceiving Congress and the American people".
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Most disturbing about the whole affair was the mobster attitude taken by Uncle Sam in ignoring the ruling of the World Court - the judicial arm of the United Nations. Just weeks earler, the World Court overwhelmingly held that the United States violated basic principles of international law by training and arming the Contras attacking Nicaragua, urging the assassination of Sandinista civilian leaders, setting mines in Nicaraguan harbors, and attacking the oil refinery. The Court ordered the United States government to pay reparations to compensate for the damage done.
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I strongly condemn terrorism, but CIA officials and their former directors are never punished - never punished for publishing a manual urging the "neutralization" of Nicaruguan citizens, never punished for running drugs out of Vietnam and bringing about a war that devastated the civilian population, never punished for running poppy seeds out of Afghanistan, etc (see www.CIAdrugs.com).
How are countries who are not members of the U.N. Security Council supposed to get justice? What would you do if your neighbors harassed you, stole from you, bullied you, and sometimes beat you or your family members? You would call the police.
And what would you do when the police will not help you, the courts will not help you, your neighbors will not help you? Many people do move from third world countries, seeking refuge in a new land. But, to borrow a cliche, some would rather fight than switch.
The Nicaraguans fought back in Nicaragua. And they lost. But what if a Nicaraguan had gotten the bright idea to come to Cinncinnati and take out the billionaire? And maybe some of his friends?
They might have had a better chance had they done so. But what about the innocent Buckeyes dismissed as "colateral damage"?
It is no wonder that the victims today of Uncle Sam's global injustice are taking the fight to its source. The victims cannot rely on the average American voter to help them out. How many American voters listened to Fr. Survil and pressured their politicians to stop the aggression against Nicaragua? How many American voters voted the politicians out of office for their negligence? Too few.
And that is how Uncle Sam's foreign policy puts our public safety at risk.
The American voter's indifference to the plight of Uncle Sam's global victims is forcing the victims to make us concerned. "If we're going to hurt, then they're going to hurt along with us" so goes their thinking born of years of frustration without international law.
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Justice Jackson, the United States prosecutor at the Nuremburg trials of Nazi war criminals, said "If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us".
My has our country disregared those words during the last 50 years!
www.fff.org
- Robert Williams, School Administrator (February 08, 2002; Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio)
