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<h1 class="reader-title">The US & Nicaragua: a Case Study in
Historical Amnesia & Blindness</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/dan-kovalik/"
rel="nofollow">Dan Kovalik</a> - June 15, 2018</span></div>
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<p>I was stunned the other day to see <a
href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/06/04/nicaragua-brink-calamity/pXOf7gOpjerrYR6ucLExbP/story.html">an
opinion piece by Stephen Kinzer in <em>The Boston
Globe</em></a> in which he was portraying the
violent anti-government protests in Nicaragua as some
kind of revolutionary insurrection. What is surprising
about Kinzer’s position is that he is the individual who
wrote the wonderfulbook, <em><a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Shah%27s_Men">All
The Shah’s Men</a></em>– one of the essential
readings about the CIA-backed coup against Prime
Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran in 1953.</p>
<p>What is happening in Nicaragua right now looks a lot
like what happened in Iran during this coup, and yet,
Kinzer somehow does not see this. In this way, Kinzer
typifies the utter confusion of so many in this country
— including those who should know better, such as many
self-described leftists — about what is happening in
Nicaragua and in Latin America generally.</p>
<p>First of all, let us look at what Kinzer correctly
describes as the tactics used by the CIA in overthrowing
Mosaddegh and installing the Shah of Iran in his place.
The main tactic was to organize, pay and direct violent
street protesters to create a chaotic situation which
would then provoke a violent response from the
government – a response which could be used to justify
the military’s moving in against Mosaddegh under the
pretext of restoring order and democratic rule.</p>
<p>In <em>All The Shah’s Men</em>, Kinzer describes the
days leading up the coup as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The riots that shook Tehran on Monday intensified on
Tuesday. Thousands of demonstrators, unwittingly under
CIA control, surged through the streets, looting
shops, destroying pictures of the Shah, and ransacking
the offices of royalist groups. Exuberant nationalists
and communists joined in the mayhem. The police were
still under orders from Mosaddegh not to interfere.
That allowed rioters to do their jobs, which was to
give the impression that Iran was sliding towards
anarchy. [CIA Bureau Chief Kermit] Roosevelt caught
glimpses of them during his furtive trips around the
city and said that they ‘scared the hell out of him.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Kinzer explains that when this violence was not quite
enough to provoke the desired crackdown by the
government, Roosevelt sent the US Ambassador to
Mosaddegh to trick him into using force against the
rioters by claiming that this was necessary to protect
Americans allegedly under attack in Tehran. Roosevelt
knew that Mosaddegh, inevitably moved by the Iranians’
famous feelings of hospitality towards foreign guests,
would have to act. And act he did, even going so far as
to attack his own supporters in the interest of saving
American lives, or so he was led to believe. The coup
followed shortly thereafter.</p>
<p>But rather than restoring democracy to Iran, of course,
the CIA, the Shah, and the dreaded SAVAK security and
torture apparatus later set up by the CIA to keep the
Shah in power destroyed Iranian democracy. Indeed, by
the time of the insurrection against the Shah which
ultimately toppled him in in February of 1979, Amnesty
International described the Shah’s regime as having the
worst human rights record in the world – quite a
distinction.</p>
<p>The type of game plan run by the CIA in Iran, the very
first of its kind, would be carried out again to topple
progressive and nationalist governments in the future,
most notably in countries like Guatemala in 1954 and
Chile in 1973.</p>
<p>However, as one of the foremost experts on such covert
ops, F. William Engdahl, explains, in the 1980’s, NGOs
largely took over for the CIA in carrying out these
operations. <a
href="https://ahtribune.com/in-depth/1789-william-engdahl-cia-ngos.html">As
Enghdahl relates</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>During the Reagan Presidency very damaging scandals
were becoming public about CIA dirty operations around
the world. Chile, Iran, Guatemala, the top secret
MK-Ultra project, the student movement during the
Vietnam War to name just a few. To take the spotlight
away from them, CIA Director Bill Casey proposed to
Reagan creating a “private” NGO, a kind of cut-out
that would pose as private, but in reality, as one of
its founders the late Allen Weinstein said in a later
interview to the Washington Post, “doing what the CIA
did, but privately.” This was the creation of the NGO
named National Endowment for Democracy [NED] in 1983.
. . .</p>
<p>Hiding very black dirty anti-democratic CIA
operations behind private political NGOs waving the
banner of “Human Rights” has been very effective for
Washington’s global agenda of toppling un-cooperative
regimes around the world. In effect the CIA has
weaponized human rights.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was the NED which was critical in supporting and
helping to organize the coup in Venezuela against Hugo
Chavez in 2002, a coup which thankfully was
short-lived. It is important to remember that the
precipitating event of this coup was the shooting of
protesters by snipers who were originally accused of
being Chavistas, but who later turned out to be
right-wing provocateurs. This is well-documented in the
film, <em>The Revolution Will Not be Televised.</em></p>
<p>Meanwhile, on July 19, 1979, shortly after the Shah was
ousted in Iran, tiny Nicaragua had its own revolution,
led by the Sandinistas, which toppled a brutal US-backed
dictator, Anastasio Somoza.</p>
<p>As we know, the US, through the CIA, quickly moved
against the Nicaraguan revolution, arming Somoza’s
former National Guardsmen, organizing them into the
Contras, and overseeing a brutal terrorist war against
Nicaragua which destroyed the infrastructure and economy
of Nicaragua, and which claimed the lives of 50,000
Nicaraguans. This is equivalent to 2.5 million deaths
in the United States.</p>
<p>Finally, in 1990, the Nicaraguans, exhausted by the
Contra war and economic strangulation, voted the
Sandinistas out of power. In short, the US terror
campaign succeeded according to plan.</p>
<p>The Sandinistas were in the wilderness until 2006 when
Daniel Ortega was voted in as President once more. And
while many on the left have criticized the older Ortega
as having abandoned his revolutionary and socialist
principles, a few points must be made about this.</p>
<p>First of all, while Ortega certainly has made
concessions to the business community, the conservative
political opposition and the Catholic Church, I would
ask his detractors to explain just what choice he has
had.</p>
<p>Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the
Hemisphere, was so before the Sandinistas took power in
1979, and was still so when they took power again in
2006. When the Sandinistas took power the first time,
they inherited an economy wrecked and pillaged by
Somoza, a country still left in shambles by the 1972
earthquake because Somoza siphoned off the aid money for
himself instead of rebuilding, and a country further
destroyed by Somoza who aerially bombed neighborhoods in
Managua to cling to power. When the Sandinistas took
power the second time, they inherited a country still
struggling to recover from a decade of the brutal Contra
war and by the accompanying economic embargo.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Sandinistas never even attempted to rid
Nicaragua of the leading elements of the <em>ancien
régime </em>(as Cuba did after its 1959 Revolution)
with which they now must contend. This of course has
made governing much more difficult and more radical
reforms even more so. But if the Sandinistas had moved
against these elements, such as the bourgeoisie and the
Church, then they would be criticized even more than
they are now for being repressive and anti-democratic.</p>
<p>And yet, there are some who argue that, somehow, the
Sandinistas have failed by not building socialism in one
country upon such a weak foundation, in a country with
few natural resources and in the face of hostility from
a much more powerful enemy in the United States. Never
mind that such critics generally believe that socialism
in one country is unachievable even in good conditions.
In short, the Sandinistas are criticized for not
achieving the impossible.</p>
<p>All of this recalls to mind the words of Michael
Parenti in his wonderful article, “<a
href="https://www.greanvillepost.com/2018/02/24/left-anticommunism-the-unkindest-cut/">Left
Anticommunism: The Unkindest Cut</a>”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The pure socialists regularly blame the Left itself
for every defeat it suffers. Their second-guessing is
endless. So we hear that revolutionary struggles fail
because their leaders wait too long or act too soon,
are too timid or too impulsive, too stubborn or too
easily swayed. We hear that revolutionary leaders are
compromising or adventuristic, bureaucratic or
opportunistic, rigidly organized or insufficiently
organized, undemocratic or failing to provide strong
leadership. But always the leaders fail because they
do not put their trust in the “direct actions” of the
workers, who apparently would withstand and overcome
every adversity if only given the kind of leadership
available from the left critic’s own groupuscule.
Unfortunately, the critics seem unable to apply their
own leadership genius to producing a successful
revolutionary movement in their own country. . . .</p>
<p>To be sure, the pure socialists are not entirely
without specific agendas for building the revolution.
After the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza
dictatorship in Nicaragua, an ultra-left group in that
country called for direct worker ownership of the
factories. The armed workers would take control of
production without benefit of managers, state
planners, bureaucrats, or a formal military. While
undeniably appealing, this worker syndicalism denies
the necessities of state power. Under such an
arrangement, the Nicaraguan revolution would not have
lasted two months against the U.S.-sponsored
counterrevolution that savaged the country. It would
have been unable to mobilize enough resources to field
an army, take security measures, or build and
coordinate economic programs and human services on a
national scale.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Meanwhile, the Sandinistas, within the constraints of
world capitalism as well as the immutable laws of
physics, have done many positive things within the realm
of the possible. Thus, they have done much to alleviate
poverty in Nicaragua, to build homes for the poor, to
successfully combat illiteracy and to bring a remarkable
level of economic prosperity and stability to this once
war-torn country. Even <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/22/world/americas/nicaragua-ortega-protests.html">the
<em>New York Times </em>recently acknowledged</a> that
“[m]any poor people who receive housing and other
government benefits support” Sandinista President,
Daniel Ortega.</p>
<p>Long-time Nicaragua solidarity activist, <a
href="https://afgj.org/nicanotes-lets-think-about-the-consequences-of-our-actions">Chuck
Kaufman, recently summarized these achievements</a>,
explaining that Daniel Ortega’s first action after being
re-elected as President in 2006</p>
<blockquote>
<p>was to end school fees, allowing 100,000 children
into the schools whose poverty had kept them
uneducated. This was rapidly followed by his
administration building the free public health system
into a robust institution that treated people rather
than just wrote prescriptions that the patients were
too poor to fill. The peasant agriculture sector was
revitalized bringing hundreds of thousands up out of
abject poverty, especially women and children.</p>
<p>Impoverished Nicaragua became one of the first
countries in the world to achieve the UN Millennial
Challenge to cut poverty in half by 2015. Along the
way, the Ortega government achieved sustained economic
growth of 5% and achieved labor stability through the
famous Tripartite Model in which unions and big
business negotiated semi-annual increases in the
minimum wage with the government intervening when the
two other parties couldn’t agree. The World Bank, IMF,
and European countries all praised Nicaragua for its
lack of corruption and effective use of grants and
loans. Finally, Nicaraguan women’s participation in
public and private affairs raised Nicaragua to one of
the top four countries in the world for gender
equality.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As a result of the foregoing, Nicaragua has been the
only Central American country touched by the brutal wars
of the 1980s not to be contributing to the recent mass
migration to the US. Indeed, a <a
href="https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/8731">May,
2016 DNC email released by Wikileaks</a> explains,
“Our neighbors in the Northern Triangle countries of El
Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala are in a crisis of
uncontrolled violence. Women and children from these
countries are coming to our Southwest border in search
of refuge. Essentially, no one is coming from Nicaragua
. . . .”</p>
<p>In addition, Ortega has taken some very bold moves on
the international stage, for example when he took in the
deposed Honduran President, Manuel Zelaya, after the
2009 coup, and when he offered for Miguel D’Escoto to
serve as Libya’s Ambassador to the UN when Libya, in its
death throes from the 2011 NATO bombing, had no UN
representative. Ortega also stopped sending Nicaraguan
troops to be trained at the School of the Americas (SOA)
after meeting with SOA Watch founder, Father Roy
Bourgeois.</p>
<p>And, up until the recent events in Nicaragua, Daniel
Ortega enjoyed sky-high approval ratings. Indeed, just
several months before the current events rocking
Nicaragua, <a
href="https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Nicaraguan-President-Daniel-Ortega-at-80-Aproval-Rating-Poll-20171019-0008.html">Ortega
had an astounding approval rating of nearly 80 percent</a>!</p>
<p>Now, we are told, by such folks as Stephen Kinzer, Amy
Goodman and by a number of “pure socialists,” that the
people are suddenly rising up against President
Ortega. And, some on the American left are arguing that
we should welcome and support this uprising as a new
stage of the Nicaraguan revolution which will finally
bring true socialism to that poor, isolated country.</p>
<p>I believe that such commentators could not be farther
from the truth. What is happening now in Nicaragua is
not revolution, but in fact counterrevolution. And, this
is no less true because there are some self-described
leftists who are participating in and cheering on this
uprising, just as Steven Kinzer tells us that a number
of communists and socialists unwittingly supported the
protests which unseated Mosaddegh in Iran.</p>
<p>Indeed, in an interesting article entitled, “<a
href="http://www.latinorebels.com/2018/04/29/mycontraparents/">My
Contra Parents Are Marching For a New ‘Old’ Nicaragua:
Are We, Too?</a>”, Melissa Castillo expresses
reasonable skepticism about the prevailing narrative
surrounding the protests in Nicaragua:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Another suspicious aspect of this opposition is that
it claims to include former Sandinistas who have now
turned against Ortega because of his corruption. This
is confusing because the opposition’s social media
platform does not seem to consist of any socialist
groups. The Sandinistas were built on socialism and
the leaders at the time of the revolution were largely
Marxists. A group involved in the opposition, for
instance, is the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS).
The MRS are Social Democrats who have partnered with a
right-wing coalition in recent years in order to
expand their base. By now, the MRS seems to have
grown more centrist and devotes much of its platform
to anti-Ortega rhetoric.</p>
<p>Leftists and Sandinista supporters may have
legitimate concerns about Ortega, but that does not
mean these are the same people joining forces with
right-wingers and the U.S. government or appealing to
the American public to “share” images of unrest on
social media. I believe true leftist concerns include
the concessions Ortega has made to the private sector
in his economic policy, the power he has ceded to the
church, his softening towards capitalist policies, and
the increasing influence of Western international
entities in public sector decision-making. It would
not rationally be in the interest of leftists to join
a coalition led by a private sector interested in
pulling Nicaragua further to the right.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The impetus for the current demonstrations was Ortega’s
April 16, 2018 announcement of very modest social
security reforms designed to keep Nicaragua’s
near-bankrupt social security system solvent past 2019.
Ortega actually rejected the more drastic reforms
demanded by the IMF and the business community, and then
demonstrations began which the business community
supported. But, to Castillo’s point, the business
community wants more draconian cuts; it has obviously
not supported the protests to advance progressive social
change.</p>
<p>Moreover, it was college students who really moved the
protests to a new level. But college students are not
generally concerned about reforms to social security
which will not affect them for decades.</p>
<p>As Barbara Moore, a long-time solidarity activist
living in Nicaragua, explains in her, “<a
href="https://popularresistance.org/letter-from-nicaragua/">Letter
From Nicaragua: A Catastrophic Well-Orchestrated Event
Is Occurring</a>,”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On April 19 student-led protests began what the
Mainstream media and international NGOs would
describe as a pro-democracy uprising. Initially at
issue were the social security reforms. For reasons no
one has been able to explain, the students were highly
agitated over the 1% rise in worker contributions, the
3.5% rise in employer contributions (over time) and a
5% cut in the benefit which was also a trade-off for
expanded medical coverage. The alternate proposals
rejected by the Ortega government and favored by the
private sector COSEP and the IMF involved much greater
cuts, raising the retirement age, cutting benefits
completely (the little pensions) and the privatization
of clinics.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Vietnam veteran and long-time peace activist, S. Brian
Willson, who is currently in Nicaragua and who famously
lost his legs on September 1, 1987 while sitting in on
railroad tracks to block arms shipments bound for
Central America, sent Barbara Moore’s letter to <em>Popular
Resistance</em><a
href="https://popularresistance.org/letter-from-nicaragua/">with
a note which reads</a>, in pertinent part: “This is a
very good assessment of the orchestrated coup
in Nicaragua. The author is a Gringo [sic.] who lives in
Managua working at the Ben Linder house who happens to
be stuck in Granada because we are under siege by many
thugs armed I am sure with help of the US.” I note
that I was in Nicaragua doing reforestation work and
learning about the brutality of US foreign policy at the
time Brian lost his legs in protest. His great
sacrifice has had a huge impact on many of us, and I
find it quite sad that the voices of people like Brian
Willson are not being heard on the issue of Nicaragua at
this critical time.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, what we do know is that one of the main
student groups behind the current protests – <a
href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-latin-american-regime-change-tour-now-playing-nicaragua/243431/">the
Civil Youth Movement (MCJ) “was created by and
received funding from the National Democratic
Institute (NDI)</a>” — the NDI, in turn, being one of
the three pillars of the National Endowment for
Democracy (NED) which took over a number of covert
operations for the CIA in the 1980’s. Indeed, <a
href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-latin-american-regime-change-tour-now-playing-nicaragua/243431/">between
2014 and 2017, the NED has given $4.2 million</a> to
opposition groups in Nicaragua for the purpose of
“democracy promotion” (aka, “regime change”).</p>
<p>At the same time, there is no doubt that the protests,
which began peacefully on April 17, accelerated due to
violence and the great loss of life which has taken
place since the protests began, with certainly over 100
people killed. However, there has been much
disinformation about this violence both within Nicaragua
and in the Western press.</p>
<p>First and foremost, whenever you see a tally of the
deaths, all of the responsibility for them is laid at
the feet of the Nicaraguan security forces even though
members of the security forces themselves are included
in the tally, as are government supporters and
bystanders. Indeed, one of the first people killed in
the protests was a police officer, and many have been
killed since – some at their homes <em><a
href="http://tortillaconsal.com/tortilla/node/3001">and
even in their barracks after Ortega ordered the
police off the streets</a></em>. But you are never
told this. You are also never told <a
href="https://afgj.org/nicanotes-lets-think-about-the-consequences-of-our-actions">of
the fact</a> that, up until these very recent events,
“Nicaragua’s community based policing, and their women’s
police stations, specializing in domestic violence, were
studied by police departments throughout the world and
were famous for their record of positive community
relations.”</p>
<p>My friends in Nicaragua tell me that what seems
suspicious is that some of the student groups, armed as
they immediately were with an arsenal of
well-constructed weapons, were so obviously prepared in
advance to start a violent uprising, and clearly used
the opportunity of the protests against the social
security reforms as a mere pretext to start and provoke
violence. <a
href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-latin-american-regime-change-tour-now-playing-nicaragua/243431/">As
one commentator explains</a>, while “most of the media
reports have portrayed the opposition groups and
protestors as a ‘rag tag’ team of students, . . .
examples of opposition violence, such as opposition use
of ‘homemade mortars’ and ‘gas bombs’ as well as the
burning of public buildings has received minimal
coverage in the Western media.”</p>
<p>And, it was these well-armed protesters who became
predominant two days after the protests began. As the
independent media collective, <a
href="https://www.telesurtv.net/english/analysis/Nicaragua-Regains-Its-Balance-After-Social-Reform-Protests-20180428-0011.html">Tortilla
Con Sol, reported</a>, “from April 19 onward,
extremist opposition activists hijacked the student
protests, attacking hospitals, government and municipal
authority offices, public buildings of all kinds,
university precincts and even the brand new national
baseball stadium.”</p>
<p>Quite tellingly, the violent groups calling for Ortega
to step down in the midst of his presidential term –
despite the fact that he won re-election in 2016 with
about 70% of the vote — have been attacking symbols of
the Sandinista Revolution which overthrew the dictator
Anastasio Somoza. Again, this reveals these groups to
be more counter-revolutionaries than revolutionaries.</p>
<p>Another aspect of the violence which is largely being
ignored is the strong evidence of snipers (remember the
key role snipers played in the coup against Hugo Chavez
in 2002) in carrying out precision killings which are
then later blamed on the police.</p>
<p>Barbara Moore, citing the forensics described in a
report by the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights, <a
href="https://popularresistance.org/letter-from-nicaragua/">explains</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The opposition claimed and continues to claim the
National Police had used lethal and deadly force,
firing indiscriminately into crowds with
live ammunition. Yet that seems impossible given the
forensics, nearly every fatality occurred in a
precise, specific, even clean shot to the head, neck
or chest. Not exactly what one would expect given the
street battles filled with heightened levels of chaos
or that when police do shoot to kill they are trained
to aim for the mid-section.</p>
<p>The public, deceived by press reports,
the international mainstream media and rightfully
outraged over the killings continued over the
following weeks to take to the streets. Almost always
the same pattern repeated itself; more killed- always
a male, despite the fact the early protests were well
attended by females. The victims continued to be shot
with incredible precision always in the head or neck,
sometimes in the chest. These facts, incidentally
corroborate government claims that snipers
were responsible for the killings. As the death
toll continues to rise this pattern has remained
entirely constant.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This brings us full circle back to Stephen Kinzer’s
piece in <em>The Boston Globe</em>. Kinzer begins this
piece by describing a key incident which has further
inflamed the situation in Nicaragua:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As a mass of unarmed protesters filed past Dennis
Martínez Stadium in Managua, Nicaragua, on May 30, <em>snipers
inside the stadium began firing at them.</em> That
day’s casualties joined a list of about 100 dead and
1,000 wounded and missing in the last two months.
Among those outraged was the person for whom the
stadium is named. Dennis Martínez is the most
celebrated of all Nicaraguan baseball players,
immortalized by pitching a perfect game for the
Montreal Expos in 1991.(emphasis added).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Kinzer then goes on to explain how Daniel Ortega is
allegedly responsible for the violence that has been
taking place in Nicaragua, and to criticize him for
remaining “defiant” in his refusal not to step down from
his elected office. Meanwhile, Kinzer neglects to
mention how opposition groups ransacked the Dennis
Martínez stadium.</p>
<p>What is remarkable about this piece — written by a man
who literally wrote the book on the CIA’s manipulation
of violence in unseating Iran’s Mohammad Mosaddegh — is
that Kinzer does not even try to identify who these
unnamed “snipers” were. And, while he makes a passing
reference much later in his piece to alleged
“paramilitary gangs” of Ortega, he does not attempt to
connect them to this sniper firing at the stadium. In
short, Kinzer glosses over the most important detail of
the narrative, and that is because it is the most
inconvenient one for him in his apparent crusade to urge
Ortega’s resignation.</p>
<p>If these snipers are, as the Nicaraguan government
claims, part of the violent opposition’s attempt to
overthrow Ortega, then what is happening in Nicaragua
must be seen in a very different light than what we are
being told by the likes of Kinzer. And, this is the
only logical conclusion. There simply is no incentive
for the Nicaraguan government, over one month into the
protests, to incite even more protest and opposition by
firing into a crowd of demonstrators. This could only
serve the interests of those waging the coup operation,
and it indeed has served these interests quite well.
Indeed, Kinzer himself rightly points this out,
explaining that “[f]uneral marches balloon into new
protests, and when they are attacked [again, we are not
told by whom], the spiral intensifies.”</p>
<p>Ortega, who currently has the reins of government, has
all the incentive for the status quo of peace and calm
to return to Nicaragua, for this means he remains in his
position as president. It is the opposition who needs a
game changer – one which could only be brought about by
dramatic events such as those that took place at the
baseball stadium on May 30. But these realities do not
seem to be worth considering by those like Kinzer who,
ironically parroting the coup plotters who overthrew
Mosaddegh, are pontificating in the press about the need
to promote democracy by unseating an elected leader.</p>
<p>What all parties can certainly agree on is that the
current events in Nicaragua are indeed calamitous, and
becoming more so with each passing day. The economy has
already suffered <a
href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-latin-american-regime-change-tour-now-playing-nicaragua/243431/">about
$250 million in losses</a>– a hefty sum for such a
small country. And, this figure will surely climb as
businesses, burned down by the violent opposition, do
not re-open, and as tourism, a major source of national
revenue, surely dries up. Indeed, just today, American
Airlines announced that it is suspending flights to
Managua as a result of the violence there.</p>
<p>No one in their right mind could wish any of this upon
another nation – especially upon a nation which has
suffered so much as Nicaragua. And I guarantee you that
if Ortega is forced out of office by this violence, the
result will not be, as some on the ostensible left would
have us believe, a deepening of democracy and
socialism. Rather, it will result in a return of the
right- wing to power, an end to the social programs
which have greatly benefitted the poor and the further
destruction of the symbols and memorials of the very
laudable Sandinista Revolution. The result, in other
words, will be a counterrevolution. Anyone calling
themselves a leftist, or even a humanitarian, must
oppose such an end.</p>
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<p> <em><strong>Daniel Kovalik,</strong> the author of <a
href="https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1510739343/counterpunchmaga">The
Plot to Attack Iran</a>, wrote this piece with the
significant help and encouragement of friends in Tehran.</em>
</p>
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