U.S. Relations With Nicaragua

I would like to thank you very much for publishing two pieces on Nicaragua Jan. 1: Harry Nelson’s “Nicaragua Struggles to Aid Its Children” (Opinion), and Rep. Mickey Leland’s “Where Was U.S. in Nicaragua’s Hour of Need?” (Op-Ed Page). It would be hard for me to understand how any member of Congress, whatever he or she may think of particular Sandinista ideology or policies, could again vote aid for the Contras or support withholding aid from hurricane victims in that tortured land after reading these fine columns.

How did we go so wrong as to give Ronald Reagan’s obsessional delusions about Nicaragua precedence over human decency, or the humanitarian values this country supposedly upholds? Yet we rush massive aid (quite rightly) to victims of a natural disaster in the Soviet Union while refusing the same to a far smaller and more pitiable country whose crime is that it allegedly is a satellite of the power we are helping. In the same nation we have also maintained “freedom fighters” whose idea of war is to blow up schools and clinics, with or without their small charges inside, while we want to help pull children from the rubble in Armenia.

It would be something from absurdist black comedy were it not also so tragic for the victims. And this is not to mention that a policy of compassion rather than war would garner us far more friends in Nicaragua and the rest of the world.

ROBERT S. ELLWOOD

Director, School of Religion

USC