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The Grenada Example
Published on Sunday, October 26, 2003 by the Long Island, NY Newsday
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The Grenada Example
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by Les Payne
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It was 20 years ago that the United States invaded a tiny Caribbean island and, in a military move presaging the Iraq misadventure, executed a regime change that cost 88 lives.
Grenada had no mustachioed menace, managed no global reign of terror and certainly supplied none of the nation's oil. What attracted U.S. attention to the "Spice Island" was the ideology of its two top leaders: Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and his deputy, Bernard Coard. Both men were Marxist, and they came to power by staging a 1979 coup that overthrew one Eric Gairy. The coup caught the Reagan administration quite by surprise. Looking over the shoulders of Bishop and Coard, the CIA saw the expansionist plans of Fidel Castro and behind him the Soviet Union.
In the white heat of the Cold War, the United States rose up with all its special-forces might to smite this upstart island of some 90,000 mostly brown inhabitants. The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 set the Americas beyond the reach of European expansionism and reserved the Caribbean as something of a private U.S. lake. Only Cuba stood in defiance.
There were to be no more Cubas.
After rolling up the government of Michael Manley in nearby Jamaica, U.S. intelligence turned its Caribbean attention to Grenada. Already the island was reeling under relentless economic pressure and its leaders, though brilliant academically, could not cope with the geopolitical circumstances. Within three years, Bishop had established himself as a leading voice for independence in the Caribbean.
Just before his 1979 trip to the United States, Prime Minister Gairy ordered that Bishop and his rebels be arrested. They acted first. Bishop and 43 members of the New Jewel Movement rode into the capitol in a small truck and two cars. Upon their approach, Gairy's 200-man army scattered into the night. Bishop's men seized the airport, the radio station, then set fire to the army barracks.
This was not exactly Bastille Day, though islanders were instructed to tune in their radios for word of the takeover of the revolution. In an effort to defend itself, Bishop asked the United States for economic aid and was offered $5,000 for his efforts. "The coup took us by surprise, but it certainly didn't take the Cubans by surprise," said an official at the U.S. Embassy in Barbados at the time. "We knew of Bishop's plans, but we didn't think he would be able to pull it off."
Straightaway, the United States knew that the New Jewel Movement was Marxist and very likely to link up with Cuba and the Soviet Union. Within 48 hours, Castro had delivered crates of AK-47 rifles and ammunition for the New Jewel Movement to protect itself against Gairy's threats to retake the island. Castro was so quick with his arms shipment that some in the U.S. State Department theorized - erroneously - that Cuba had staged the coup. The Carter and Reagan administrations toyed with the idea of a blockade, but settled for increasing U.S. military presence in nearby islands and pumping money into the region.
On Oct. 13, 1983, by escalating means, the split between Bishop and Coard had widened to the point that Bishop was placed under house arrest and eventually murdered along with several of his loyalists.
This bloodbath gave the United States its excuse to move in and establish a friendly government. Under the guise of protecting the 600 U.S. medical students of the island, the Reagan administration invaded Grenada on Oct. 25, 1983.
Additionally, the Reagan administration cited as its main concerns: Soviet arms on the island, and the new international airport the Cubans were constructing. Six warehouses, Reagan said, "contained weapons and ammunition stacked almost to the ceiling, enough to supply thousands of terrorists."
Reporters examined these six warehouses and discovered that three contained no weapons at all but stored spare parts for trucks, food and military uniforms from Spain. The other three sheds were not stacked to the ceiling, but they did contain a bizarre array of reconstructed Soviet weapons, including a pre-World War II wheeled recoilless rifle and a Marlins 30-30 carbine made in 1870.
As for the airport, the island desperately needed it for increasing trade and to lure more tourists. It operates today as a jewel of the island. Reminiscent of the U.S. rationale for invading Iraq, the Reagan administration circulated false information, exaggerated the threat to U.S. citizens and invaded a sovereign country with dubious constitutional authority.
Despite the U.S. invasion and its attempts at nation-building, Grenada is still a poor country. The one thing that islanders agree is that Bishop was a great leader and that the future of the island still hangs on his dream.
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc
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