Who's to blame?

Who's to Blame?

AS EVERYONE'S picture of the double arms deal sharpens, this is what we have. Probing for contacts in post-Khomeini Iran, and seeking the release of Shiite-held Americans in Lebanon, the Reagan Administration sold some millions of dollars' worth of weapons to Teheran. The Saudis paid the bill, indeed overpaid it, intending the surplus to go to the freedom-fighters in Nicaragua. Lieutenant Colonel North, of the National Security Council, was the impresario of both operations. New details (an intermediate bank account in the Cayman Islands, a contribution from the sultan of Brunei) keep popping up. But these seem to be the main lineaments.

The enemies of the Reagan Administration charge it, in public, with incompetence and dishonesty. There is something to these accusations, though less than the Reagan-haters would have us believe.

The charge of incompetence, as directed against Reagan personally--in the phrase of Jeff Greenfield, "what did Reagan know, and when did he forget it?"--is in fact an old one. Reagan has always kept track of fewer details than other politicians. Jimmy Carter began his political career with a pledge to read every bill that came before the Georgia Senate, and took a speed-reading course to be able to do it. That witless obsessiveness was one of the reasons the voters replaced Carter with Reagan. "A President's role can become diluted and weakened," wrote Dean Acheson, "through yielding to the temptation to take over and run all operations. This not only wastes a vast amount of time . . . but limits, by narrowing, the President's attention to a few subjects that he allows to absor bhim."

The charge of dishonesty, with respect to Iran, is that the Administration has talked out of both sides of its mouth: While berating our European allies for being soft on terrorism, we have been dealing with an exporter of state terror. The implicit axiom here--that states may never say one thing and do another--is baseless. We demanded unconditional surrender from Japan in World War II, while secretly agreeing to a condition--that the EMperor could remain. That bit of double-dealing probably saved three-quarters of a million lives. There remains the question, Was hypocrisy justified in this case? If the only goal of the Iranian deal had been the release of hostages, the answer would be no. For a geopolitical advantage, it would quite possibly be yes.

With respect to Nicaragua, it is alleged that some Administration figures--beginning with North, and maybe going higher up the chain of command--broke laws forbidding military aid to the freedom-fighters. From a legal standpoint, everything here depends on details. Congress's anti-Contra legislation was not an embargo; the Administration was not required to prevent third parties from helping out. Many a lawyer will be sifting the details of agency law and the Swiss banking system.

This is the public indictment, and it is fraudulent. Since when have the press, and the congressional Democrats, been fans of procedural nicety or, 'scuse us, the balance of powers? From the Constitution to the Roman Catholic Church, liberalism is on the side of evolution, situationalism, heeding the "spirit of the times."

The real program of the anti-Reagan posse, which some liberals have been so incautious as to avow, is to undo Reagan's foreign policy. "I cannot think," wrote columnist Mary McGrory, "of a more felicitous outcome. Never was there a foreign policy that more reflected right-wing fantasies and obsessions." She went on to cite SDI and aid to Savimbi. "It was not just the means that went wrong," Anthony Lewis chimed in, "but the end." The immediate liberal goal is to sabotage the Contras. "They will not get another nickel," crowed an aide to Senator Cranston. "As for future spending," said Representative Dave McCurdy, "the Contras are on their own." Some of the rejuvenated liberals, like Cranston, are hard leftists from way back. Some, like McCurdy, are slow learners who seemed, before the mess hit, to have finally seen the Sandinistas for what they are. Some, like Senator Moynihan, have unlearned all they once knew (Moynihan has been unlearning for a long time: He denounced the Grendada rescue as soon as the 82nd Air-borne landed). Whatever their motives, they are out for blood (see also "Blood Lust," p. 63). After six years, the anti-anti-Communists are tired of containing Reagan. What they want now is rollback.

If the liberals manage to put this program into effect, so be it. But they must know they will take the credit. The forces that finally persuaded Congress, too little and too late, to vote military assistance are still in play: The Sandinistas did not become any less Communist because Adnan Kashoggi turns out to have bankrolled the other side; their arsenal has not shrunk because Ollie North was giving the Contras peashooters. If congressional Democrats want a Sovietized Central America and fifty million refugees in the Southwest, let them say so--or realize that others will say it for them. If, on the world stage, they want a reprise of the Ford-Carter interregnum, when Iran, Indochina, and the Portuguese empire went down the tubes, they can have it--along with the responsibility.