Reagan: "We Have a Right to Help"

Sporting a shamrock in his lapel, Ronald Reagan was about to get his hair cut in the White House basement when he took time to talk to Washington Contributing Editor Hugh Sidey. As the subject turned to Nicaragua, the President's St. Patrick's Day cheer evaporated and he became unusually intense and passionate. Excerpts from the interview:

On the U.S. goal. The cancer that has to be excised is Nicaragua. We can try and help those people who want freedom to bring it about themselves. We have a right to help the people of Nicaragua who are demanding what we think are any people's rights--the rights to determine their own government.

On the Sandinista regime. What happened there was a hijacking. The people of Nicaragua set out to get rid of a, certainly you could not call it a totalitarian government, but an authoritarian government: the Somoza dictatorship. The revolutionaries appealed to the Organization of American States and said, "Would you ask Somoza to step down so we can end the killing?" The OAS asked them, "What are your revolutionary goals?" They told them democracy, pluralistic society, free trade, freedom of religion. But among the revolutionaries there was an organization that had existed before the revolution--the Sandinistas, a Communist organization. The man whom they honor, Sandino, he said he was a Communist. (Augusto Cesar Sandino, assassinated in 1934, was a guerrilla leader and nationalist who in fact was not a Communist.) They ousted their other allies in the revolution, and then they established a totalitarian Communist regime, the same process that Castro employed in taking over Cuba.

On what the contras could accomplish. The Sandinistas have to look at one of two choices: the possibility of a military defeat and being totally overthrown, or a choice of having a political settlement in which, while they would have to give up this monopoly on power they have, at least they could be in a position to run for office if they could get the people's approval.

On possible U.S. intervention. All of this talk that I am nursing an ambition to send in the troops--no. To send in troops would lose us every friend in Latin America. They want us to help the contras, but not with troops. The only thing I've uttered is a warning that if this revolutionary, this Sandinista, group is allowed to solidify their base, they intend to spread that revolution to other countries. There might come a day when their acts--hostile acts --would be directly against us and a situation then when it wouldn't be going down to try and run someone else's government. It would be protecting ourselves.

On diplomacy. We've made ten attempts to negotiate with them. But when have we ever seen a Communist totalitarian government voluntarily give up their power and say, "Well, O.K., we want to have more democracy"? We haven't. Diplomacy must have behind it strength. The Sandinistas are not going to agree to all the things that Contadora has been asking of them unless they feel the pressure of the contras.

On the strength of the contras. The Sandinistas felt pressured before 1984 and the contras were doing very well. But in 1984, the Congress shut off our ability to help. From then on, the contras have been shrinking in size.

On Daniel Ortega's comment that Reagan is not rational. I don't find him very rational. Well, he's rational in his belief, and that is he is a dyed-in-the- wool believer in the totalitarian Marxist government, which he has.