It is a measure of the hostility that President George W. Bush has managed to earn for his country across the world that analysts look at the results of Nicaraguan elections not in terms of what they mean to that country, but in hat of how much of setback it is to the Bush administration. Observers see Daniel Ortega’s return to power as an election victory that bolsters an anti-US bloc in Latin America, led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
It must be hoped that Bush, who takes seriously his self-proclaimed role as the world’s leading champion of democracy, is not about to punish one more country’s voters for making a democratic choice he doesn’t agree with. The possibility of intervention cannot be ruled out because there have been talks of sanctions in case the country chose the former Sandinista leader as president. Ortega, who overthrew the brutal Somoza dictatorship in 1979 was elected president in 1984 and lost the job six years later. The election was part of the deal that ended the US-backed Contra rebellion. Sixteen years later, Nicaraguans who benefited from land distribution and the creation of health, welfare and education services under Ortega are turning to him again. The economy has grown slightly under three US-backed right-wing presidents, one of whom, Arnoldo Aleman, was later convicted of money laundering and fraud. However two devastating hurricanes and a massive earthquake have hampered progress. The majority of Nicaragua’s 5.7 million remain desperately poor. It is therefore unsurprising that they should be turning again to the one political leader who ever brought them any substantial change.
Ortega, grey-haired now, has claimed his revolutionary days are over. He has nevertheless vowed that he would like to save Nicaraguans from the effects of “savage capitalism.” He remains a friend of Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. For that alone, in Washington’s eyes, he is a threat. He has dropped his Marxism of the Cold War era and now speaks mainly of God, peace and reconciliation. He promises to work with business leaders and has backed a trade deal with the United States.
But all those may not matter to US officials. They still do not trust him and worry about his friendship with Chavez. No one should doubt American preparedness to interfere. Under Ronald Reagan, America mined Nicaraguan harbors and illegally funded the rebellion by the Contra rebels which cost over 50,000 lives.
Americans are openhearted, generous people. On balance, they would like to do good. But they see that good exclusively in American terms. Their foreign interventions have been characterized by a stunning disregard for the concerns and ambitions of others and too often by a profound ignorance of the societies they seek to influence. The result has been disaster.
This incompetence by the Bush administration has actually reduced every one of its ambitions to dust — dust unfortunately mixed tragically with the blood of hundreds of thousands of largely innocent people.
