By heaping lies upon lies President Reagan has disgraced the United States. It was a lie that so grave a threat had arisen to the lives of American citizens in Grenada as to justify an invasion of that little island. It is a lie that the Soviet Union and Cuba had established a base there and that a “Cuban occupation of the island had been planned.” The first lie could not bear the briefest scrutiny. For no American citizen in Grenada had been harmed. And assuming that the lives of US nationals were in danger, why were other East Caribbean puppet governments invited to participate in the invasion? The second lie is equally unfounded. There is not the slightest evidence to suggest either that the Soviet Union and Cuba were acting in concert in Grenada, or that their rulers are so stupid as to have believed that they could get away with a base on an island so close to the United States. Havana has said that the arms stacks the US claims to have discovered in Grenada have been planted by the US itself. Such an act on the part of some American agency is not beyond the realm of possibility. But let us suppose that some small arms of Soviet manufacture have indeed been found on the island. What does it prove? That the Russians or the Cubans or both were planning to convert it into a base for operations in the region? The proposition is too ridiculous to merit consideration.
Mr. Reagan is, of course, not the first American president to indulge in such mendacity in order to justify aggression. President Johnson invented the Tonkin Bay incident – an alleged attack by North Vietnamese on a US ship -in the sixties so that he could bamboozle Congress into giving him powers which he could abuse to wage an undeclared war on that country. Nor is it the first time that an American administration has sought to justify an invasion of a sovereign member of the United Nations in the name of “defence of freedom”. The attack on the Dominican republic was explained in similar terms. In the past Washington could deceive a large number of people who took its protestations of concern for liberty at their face value. Today it cannot deceive any self-respecting individual or government. The debate in the UN security council establishes that point. But the invasion and the debate also show that the United States recognizes no law and that there is no international organisation or rival power or combination of powers which can compel it to behave. US administrations in the past have in the final analysis been restrained by public opinion at home and that public opinion has asserted itself only when the cost of a particular aggression has risen to an unacceptable level as in Vietnam. But it does not follow that the rest of the world has no choice but to acquiesce in whatever Washington decides to do. We must continue to raise our voice against its interventions and acts of blatant aggression.