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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MAY 3, 1985
PAGE 11
the disasters correspond to their own wishes. After all, Cham
berlain had 90 percent of the people with him at the time of
Munich and 18 months later Munich became an epithet. So what do
you do when a President and his closest advisers are deeply
convinced that something is in the overwhelming national interest
and they can't carry the Congress or the media with them? This is
one fundamental problem.
What we absolutely need is some kind of consensus on what is a
vital interest•••• We have to be willing to face the fact that
the challenge is almost certain to be ambiguous: if you could
prove that the danger to us 1.s overwhelming, everybody would
agree, but by the time that the danger is overwhelming in the
modern period it is too late to do something about it.
� if we commit ourselves,� must prevail. � cannot fight�
�for� stalemate: you can only fight��for� victory and
then you can be generous in the settlements•••• But if you pro
claim stalemate as an objective, you're likely to lose or at any
rate get into so protracted a conflict that the public will not
sustain it.
Most Americans, and apparently their representatives as well, have little
inkling of the intensity of the hatred directed at them by their adversar
ies. Notice this article from the December 14, 1984 NATIONAL REVIEW:
Jose Luis Llovio Menendez is hardly a household name in the
United States, but you can bet he has made a name for himself in
Cuba. From 1966 to 1981, except for a brief stint in prison for
reasons he's still not sure of, Llovio served the Castro regime,
usually in the fields of either finance or culture. After years
of disenchantment with Castro, Llovio fled in 1982••••
Although he has been in the U.S. for almost one year, Llovio only
recently met the press•••• "Fidel hates totally the United
States," Llovio told reporters. "He hates its institutions. He
hates its policies. He hates everybody here." In his discussion
of Central America, Llovio confirmed Castro's deep involvement in
the region. He is certain, for example, that Castro is covertly
bankrolling the guerrillas in El Salvador••••
Llovio offered little hope for a negotiated settlement in El
Salvador or anywhere else in the region. Castro and his henchmen
don't want� settlement, he said: they want "to make� lot of
Cubas everywhere. They want Nicaragua and El Salvador. After
that Honduras and Guatemala, you can be sure."
Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress, with blinders on, thinks the way to peace in
Central America is through "negotiation." It's just possible that an an
gered House may yet approve funds ($28 million is rumored) for the contras
beginning the next fiscal year, starting on October 1. Still, $28 million
is hardly enough, given the stakes. And, should the contras start to suc
ceed, a new Congress after 1986 or 1988 will probably only pull the plug
again, probably just when the contras are on the verge of victory.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau