RONALD RADOSH
75
old pro-Moscow Communists, put it this way: "The Sandinistas
have achieved the impossible. They have united the opposition
against them and turned the popular classes into supporters of the
right." One wonders if Harrington would second Oscar Arias's com–
ment after the 1988 crackdown, that "before it was the United States
that was isolated - now it is Nicaragua that is completely alone."
One looks in vain in 1988 for criticism of the Sandinistas from
Harrington and Democratic Socialists of America, when it is most
needed, and for criticism without the qualification that whatever the
failings of the
commandantes,
they are the fault of the United States.
When this writer was in Managua in 1987, he overheard a conversa–
tion between Alejandro Bendana, Secretary-General of the Foreign
Ministry, and a leader of the Institute for Policy Studies, now a
senior advisor to Jesse Jackson. Bendana asked at one point: "How
about Michael Harrington? Can we still depend on him to defend
us?" Unfortunately, we know what the answer is.
Harrington also writes about Grenada and the New Jewel
Movement as if his effort to "persuade them to move in a democratic
and civil libertarian direction" was being listened to. Harrington
alludes to the so-called Grenada papers, but only to mention that the
State Department distributed those which revealed that New Jewel
and other third-world parties had met with the Sandinistas to plot
"concerted action in the SI." He simply says that the State Depart–
ment's attempt to paint this as part of a "'Leninist' conspiracy . . .
was not at all convincing." Has Harrington not read the entire
Grenada papers, which have been published in various editions?
What they clearly reveal is a crude, dogmatic, and even frightening
Caribbean version of Stalinism, in which Maurice Bishop and the
New Jewel Movement indeed showed their desire to create a dic–
tatorship in their tiny island. Moreover, the Grenada documents
were not distributed by the State Department, but by a member
party, then the governing party of Barbados. And no one has ever
challenged the accuracy of the documents or the essence of what was
revealed in them.
Moreover, Harrington remains unconvincing when he says
that blame for Bishop's murder rests "on Washington's hands"
because Bishop had been planning to "democratize his revolution."
As
always, Harrington's hopes are portrayed as reality when it
comes to apologizing for third-world dictatorships. Against the tide
of evidence, Harrington prefers to see Bishop in a good light. The
