Mr. Ortega's gaffe - Daniel Ortega announces end of cease-fire

National Review, Nov 24, 1989

Mr. Ortega's Gaffe

DANIEL ORTEGA has many faults but one virtue: he blurts out what everyone knows to be true but tactfully avoids noticing. At the Costa Rican "summit" of 17 Western Hemisphere leaders, he announced that the Sandinista regime would abandon its ceasefire with the Contras. But there is not now, and never has been, a Sandinista ceasefire with the Contras. There have been public declarations of a ceasefire, but the fighting has continued unabated. All that has ceased is media interest, congressional concern, and, of course, U.S. military aid to the Nicaraguan resistance. Mr. Ortega's announcement marked no change; it predicted the status quo.

What, then, was its purpose? The best speculation suggests that Mr. Ortega wanted to push the U.S. into withdrawing humanitarian aid as well, and so into dissolving the Contras as a fighting force. That done, if the Sandinistas had then "postponed" the February 25 election, or even lost it but held onto power, there would have been no ready-made resistance to their despotic rule. And given the Contras' experience of congressional infidelity to U.S. allies, starting up a new force would have been a gargantuan task.

Each of the 17 leaders in San Jose had been aware of these facts but preferred the Sandinista repression to continue under the ceasefire disguise. When Mr. Ortega committed his gaffe, they were shocked, shocked, to discover that repression was going on in Nicaragua. So was Congress. So was the New York Times. A further tranche of humanitarian aid now looks assured, and Daniel Ortega is suggesting that the "ceasefire" might hold after all.

Which is nice but, as Bishop Butler said: "Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be; why then should we desire to be deceived?"