Immoral Hypocrisy

The New York Times rarely stoops to levity in its news section, but the third page of Tuesday's paper was hard to read with a straight face.

One article told of a group of men charged with attempting a coup against a left-wing "strongman's" government in the small South American country of Surinam--a nation most people don't know exists. The article stated that "All 13 were charged with violations of the Neutrality Act, which bars Americans from involvement in attempts to overthrow other governments."

Right against this one, through some editor's sense of irony, was a story with quite the opposite message. It described Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega Saavedra's efforts to win further condemnation in the World Court for U.S. aid to the rebels known as Contras, who are avowedly trying to overthrow his government.

One could either laugh cynically or cry over this nation's hypocrisy.

The second article quoted Nicaragua's President--"It is known that the United States has compromised the sovereignty of some neighboring countries of ours, like Honduras and Costa Rica, in order to maintain its aggression against Nicaragua." It went on to note that the World Court has already ordered the United States to stop "arming and training" Contra forces.

Our government periodically acts in a manner that it would consider criminal in private citizens. Acts of state and acts of an individual are judged by different sets of rules because governments are assumed to be more responsible than individuals. Theoretically.

The Neutrality Act was presumably introduced to punish individual Americans who disturb the sovereignty of legitimately constituted governments against which the United States has no substantive grievance. Although Nicaragua fits this description, it is one of the nations that has not been protected from our government or our private citizens.

The law ought to prosecute people whose motives for invading other nations are selfish or paranoid in the extreme--like the Surinam invasion party, which hoped to abscond with the contents of the national bank, or the neurotic commander in Doctor Strangelove who is convinced he is surrounded by Communist plots.

When our leaders' invasion of other nations is not a responsible action, but motivated by greed for favorable trade and cheap labor, or fear sparked by various far-fetched versions of the Domino Theory, they fall into the same moral category.

Every President from Kennedy to Reagan, with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter, is morally guilty. The names in any history book speak for themselves: the Bay of Pigs; Vietnam; Cambodia; Chile; Lebanon; Grenada; and most recently, Nicaragua.

Acertain statue was recently hyped so vulgarly that every columnist on the East Coast has had a crack at the 200 Elvis impersonators. The celebration affirmed this country's wish to be symbolized accurately by a beacon of liberty and equal opportunity for all.

Such a national image is hard to reconcile with the U.S. government's current policy, especially towards Nicaragua.

A few words trickle out of one's memory from the television pleas for funds to refurbish this statue. In them, Lady Liberty spoke, mourning her tarnished condition like an aging prima donna. If she could not be repolished, she threatened, "I shall become a symbol of shame."

She may already be a symbol of hypocrisy, and her physical facelift has not improved the situation. Only the President and Congress can decide what she will mean to other nations.

This icon of freedom is burnished by a new national confidence--but its metal skin is less than an inch thick. The inside of Lady Liberty is dark and hollow.