Herbert W Armstrong

Everywhere the United States looks these days there is trouble. Forty years after emerging as the world's preeminent power, challenges abound as never before. After a highly successful first term in office, President Reagan is surrounded, rather suddenly, by foreign problems. Rebuffed by a "let's-not-get-involved" Congress, his Central American policy lies, for the moment at least, dead in the water. His policy of "constructive engagement" with South Africa, intended to diffuse regional conflicts throughout Southern Africa and keep the Communists at bay, is under attack both in Congress and on the campuses of American colleges.

The all-important relationship with Japan is seriously endangered by demands for trade retaliation against Tokyo. At stake is continued harmony between Washington and its former Pacific enemy of forty years ago.

On top of all this, as the time to commemorate the 40th anniversary of V-E Day (May 8, 1945) draws near, the President finds himself caught between a rock and a hard place with regard to relations between the U.S. and the Federal Republic of Germany, the modern-day western two-thirds of America's primary World War II European adversary. It all revolves around the "Bitburg controversy."

President Reagan had agreed to a request by Chancellor Kohl to visit the German army burial ground in the small town of Bitburg, near the Luxembourg border, as a visible expression of the reconciliation between the American and German peoples. Chancellor Kohl suggested this, it is said, as a result of having had a similar reconciliation with President Mitterrand of France. They earlier met at a cemetery in Verdun, France, which contains the remains of both French and German soldiers of World War I.

Anxious to emphasize the good relations between the two countries at present, the President good-naturedly consented. Shortly afterward the plan blew apart when it was discovered that the Bitburg cemetery contains the remains of 49 Waffen-SS soldiers among the 2,000 bodies lying there. (An advance team from the White House, in going to the cemetery, did not notice the SS gravestones, apparently because of snow on the ground.)

A howl of protest then arose among World War II veterans organizations and especially Jewish groups and concentration camp survivors. (The SS as a whole was responsible for running the camps, although the Waffen-SS units, who were elite combat forces, were not involved.) The President was urged in many quarters, including 82 members of the Senate, to cancel the Bitburg portion of his state visit to West Germany. On the eve of his visit, over 300 House members also recommended cancellation. Chancellor Kohl, however, insisted that the trip remain as planned, as the prestige of his government was on the line, to say nothing of the very future of the U.S.-German relationship. Despite the domestic opposition, the President held firm, greatly relieving his embarrassed and aggrieved German hosts.

White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan told reporters that Mr. Reagan is "anguished" by the protests aroused by the planned visit, and he added during an interview on CBS News' televised "Face the Nation" program that "the President has been quite upset, as he's been a staunch friend of Israel."... Mr. Regan added that the affair will "leave a scar on him (Reagan), because he is wounded by this internally. In his heart, he will be hurt at what has been said about him and his insensitivity, when he's a very sensitive person," Regan said of the President.

It was reported in the WASHINGTON POST that former President Richard M. Nixon privately urged President Reagan last week not to back down from plans to visit the cemetery. The POST claimed that White House sources said that former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger also urged Reagan to go ahead with the planned visit, citing the importance of relations with West Germany.

The strongest remarks against the visit were made by Senator Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), who went further than other senators in suggesting that relations between the two countries could be seriously damaged if Reagan goes ahead with the visit. "If Germany, in its insistence on our President's honoring the Nazi war dead, is trying...to pretend that the Nazis were anything other than the lowest and vilest of criminals, then we must wonder whether the lessons of World War II have already been forgotten by the current leaders of Germany," Cranston said. "If that is so, perhaps we had better reassess our relationship" with West Germany.

It is a bit ironic that so much fuss should be made over the cemetery in Bitburg. The town itself is small — only 12,000 inhabitants. It is part of an unusual "twin city" arrangement. Located nearby is the site of the U.S. Air Force 36th Tactical Fighter Wing, which houses 11,000 Air Force personnel and their dependents. The residents of Bitburg largely live off the U.S. military business. Ever since the base was constructed in 1952, local relations between Germans and Americans have been good. In the biggest irony of all, on every Memorial Day since 1959, the U.S. base commander has joined the mayor of Bitburg in laying a wreath at the same spot where the President was asked to place one. It goes without saying that the burghers of Bitburg are confused. It has, as one source stated, "shaken the faith of many citizens here people who are openly proud of the hospitality they offer servicemen from a country they believed was their closest ally."

The upshot of the whole affair is that, after a 40-year "honeymoon" of sorts, U.S. relations with the German people, like those with Japan, are marked for a change.

One of the most forboding articles appeared in the April 26, 1985 LOS ANGELES TIMES. Written by the TIMES Bonn correspondent Tyler Marshall, the article was entitled "Bonn Stunned by Cemetery Furor, Takes Another Look at U.S. Relations."

The intensity of opposition to President Reagan's planned visit to a German war cemetery next month has stunned West Germany's political elite, causing many here to reassess the meaning of the country's ties with the United States.

At present, the reassessment is taking place on a personal rather than a policy level, and few here expect the controversy to yield any immediate, visible change in the political relationship. However, it is the policy-makers and opinion-formers — those most familiar with the United States — who are engaged in the process. Together, they appear to share sense of disbelief at the level of U.S. reaction, consternation about how to defuse it and worry about its long-term impact.

Two basic issues appear to separate German and American perceptions on the emotional issue. Many Americans see the 47 [actually 49] graves of Hitler's infamous SS soldiers at the Bitburg cemetery as a symbol of SS terror during the Holocaust. However, Germans focus only on the cemetery itself, stressing that most buried there were teenagers drafted for the Western Front in the final months of World War II....

Closely linked with the German perception of those buried at Bitburg is a sense of disillusionment that, even though Germany has accepted historical responsibility for the Holocaust and spent long years as a U.S. ally, the American view of Germany as a nation besmirched remains strong.

"We have said 'Never again war from German soil'; we have said 'Never again a dictatorship'; we have aligned with the West and built our democracy," said Alois Mertes, state secretary in the West German Foreign Ministry and conservative member of Parliament for Bitburg. "What can we do? How can we make it good? After 40 years, after 35 years as an ally, that the Holocaust stands square in the middle of everything, after so much.... It is terrible human disappointment." Prof. Michael Stuermer of Erlangen University, a personal advisor to Chancellor Helmut Kohl, said, "What is happening in the (United States) puts into question an unspoken assumption of our years in the Western alliance — that Germany had achieved a degree of forgiveness."

The depth of reaction here to the U.S. protest is fueled by a combination of factors, all peculiar to West Germany. Few countries are as proud of, yet so insecure about, their democracy as is West Germany. No European country is more sensitive about criticism by outsiders. No relationship means more at virtually every level of German society than that with the United States. It is now apparent that it was Kohl's eagerness to cement Germany's reconciliation with the United States and to win recognition for the country's postwar transformation that caused him to propose the cemetery visit in the first place....

There is also concern about possible longer-term fallout from the controversy. "It will take time for this to show up, but it will come," said Prof. Stuermer. "Hardfaced bureaucrats totally underestimate the politically emotional dynamite that lies in those graves."... The controversy also comes as West Germans have begun to focus for the first time on the personal sufferings of their own citizens during the war, a subject previously untouched because of the guilt that hangs over that entire period of German history. "No German parent dared tell his child how hard it was during the war," Stuermer said. "It just was never done."

Some German leaders blamed Chancellor Kohl for forcing Mr. Reagan into a seriously compromising position. Franz Josef Strauss labeled the preparation for the Bitburg visit as "clumsy" and the results "embarrassing." He called instead for Reagan to lay a wreath at a tomb of the unknown soldier in Munich, a monument for those killed in World Wars I and II. The newspaper BILD, in a recent front-page commentary, urged Kohl to cancel Reagan's scheduled cemetery visit. "Suddenly it is clear on what thin ground the 'friendship' of former enemies stands," the commentary said. "Friendship cannot be forced with violence or with grand gestures. The chancellor should spare Reagan the journey to Bitburg."

Several commentators said the affair has achieved the very opposite of what Mr. Kohl intended and has instead managed to identify the Germans more closely with Hitler in the eyes of the American public than they had been for years. "The old wounds, which were supposed to be healed, have broken open again," wrote Dietrich Strothmann in DIE ZEIT.

The Nicaragua-Vietnam Parallel

"A Nation Drenched in Bickering: His Nicaragua Policy in Tatters, Reagan Faces Risky Rebuilding," was the title given to an article written by David Gergen in the LOS ANGELES TIMES, April 26, 1985. Mr. Gergen formerly served in the Reagan White House. Mr. Gergen took note of the fact that immediately after the House handed Nicaragua a victory, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega contemptuously flew off to Moscow, to plead for economic and military aid, especially in light of rumored U.S. economic sanctions against Nicaragua.

The Nicaraguan debacle this week in Congress is sure to bring a new wave of recriminations in a nation already drenched with partisan bickering. Now that the House has rejected all forms of aid to the rebels in Nicaragua, Republicans are itching to charge Democrats with losing Central America. To the GOP it looks as if the United States is now breaking faith with the rebels, abandoning them in their hour of peril....

The finger-pointing cannot disguise the critical fact that U.S. foreign policy in Central America is in shambles. Congress has tossed out the Reagan plan and left nothing in its place. Not since pulling the plug on Vietnam and refusing aid to rebels in Angola a decade ago has Congress handcuffed a President so badly.

"Oops! We made a mistake" seems to be the reaction of some congressmen to the Ortega visit to Moscow. Senate Majority leader Robert Dole of Kansas said that the visit indicates Congress made "a major misjudgment." THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, on April 26, placed the Congress-Ortega relationship in the context of a very ill-advised marriage:

Minister: "And do you, the U.S. Congress, solemnly take this man, Daniel Ortega, to be your lawfully wedded responsibility, for richer or poorer, till death do you part?"

Congress: "We do!"

Minister: "If anyone present knows any reason why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony, let him speak now or forever hold his peace."

Someone has, but a little too late. Senator Jim Sasser, a Tennessee Democrat, now says he'd have voted for the contra aid if he'd known of Mr. Ortega's just-announced plans to make a post­wedding trip to Moscow. Too late, senator. He's Congress's problem, now. Have a nice honeymoon!

A cartoon in the WASHINGTON TIMES showed Comandante Ortega on the phone to the House Minority leader Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, saying: "Hey-y-y...Senor Tip...muchas gracias...to show my gratitude I'll send you and the boys a case of borscht from Moscow...."

Ten years ago, on April 30, 1975, the war in Vietnam ended with the fall of Saigon. Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger was recently interviewed by Jack Burby, assistant editor of The LOS ANGELES TIMES editorial pages, and Art Seidenbaum, editor of OPINION, about the events leading up to the defeat and how it has affected U.S. foreign policy, including the current dispute over U.S. conduct in Central America. The interviews appeared in the April 28 TIMES:

Q. How about Nicaragua right now and this problem of political divisions within government?

A. On Nicaragua, we are in danger of repeating the same sort of domestic debate — an Administration request hard to reconcile with a definition of vital interests. How could something be of vital interest and be only worth $14 million? And Congress was saying you must make a compromise; you might have non-lethal aid for the guerrillas. What is the meaning of that? Either it's not a vital interest or it's worth more than $14 million, — or it's worth lethal equipment. I don't want to enter into the merits of that dispute in this interview but the shape of the debate has been very similar to Vietnam....

Q. Defense Secretary Caspar M. Weinberger seems to have taken Col. Harry Summers' book about Vietnam, "On Strategy," to mean that you can't ever involve yourself in a military action unless you have full support of the American public. A lesson from Vietnam, apparently. Is that valid?

A. A President is elected to take care of the future of the people and the people will not forgive him for disasters, even if the disasters correspond to their own wishes. After all, Chamberlain 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 is 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.

But if we commit ourselves, we must prevail. You cannot fight a war for a stalemate: you can only fight a war for a victory and then you can be generous in the settlements.... But if you proclaim 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 adversaries. 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 bank rolling 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 angered 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 succeed, 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