[FEW politicians anywhere in the. world command the…]

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FEW politicians anywhere in the. world command the semimystical cross-class adulation of assassinated US President John F. Kennedy. Yet an objective Jack and Jackie Kennedy:

looking and filthy rich.

On August 13, 1961 Kruschev responded to this by the building of the Berlin Wall which consolidated the division of Germany - a "solution"

which suited the Kremlin Stalinists as much and as little as the Western imperialists.

Brinkmanship

But it was in his 1962 naval blockade of Cuba against the siting of Soviet medium-range missiles that Kennedy lent a new dimension to the term "brinkmanship" , coined but not implemented by the preceding Eisenhower/Dulles administration.

With the entire world fearing imminent nuclear destruction, Kennedy secured a climbdown by Khruschev over the missiles: but in turn conceded a pledge not to invade Cuba, and the withdrawal of obsolete US medium-range missiles from Turkey.

Though Kennedy has been posthumously praised up for his involvement in the 1963 Test Ban Treaty, it should not be forgotten that the KennedyMacNamara arms build-up gave a long-term and lasting twist to the arms race, inaugurating projects which are today bringing poisonous fruit in the form of Pershing, Cruise, MX and Trident missile systems.

And perhaps Kennedy's most lasting bequest to the American people and the world as a whole was the Vietnam war, which was only in its formative stages but well under way before his assassination.

Under Eisenhower, only a few hundred US "advisors' had been bolstering the Diem dietatorship in South Vietnam: by the end of 1962 there were 10,000 and by November 1963 there were 15,000, with a rapidly growing influx of equipment.

The incoming Texan President Johnson was to change little in Kennedy's policies at home and abroad: before long, following the paths laid down by the Boston "liberal" the USA was to be fielding 500,000 troops in a brutal, doomed war for imperialist domination in Asia.

The continuity of these policies was obscured by Kennedy's assassination: and since that time the Kennedy myth has assisted the American ruling class and union bureaucracy to contain and counter any pressures within the US workers' movement for a political break from the twin parties of capitalişm and the belated but necessary building of a Labour Party based on the unions and organisations of the oppressed.

Terry

AS THE threat of US military intervention hands over Cuba, Nicaragua and Bl Salvador, it is not only leaders of the Castro and Sandinista regimes who have issued stark warnings of the consequences.

Even renegade former Sandinista Eden Pastora (whose 3,000 US-backed "contras" are conducting cross-border raids into Nicaragua from Costa Rica in efforts to topple the regime in Managua) has warned Reagan not to send in the marines.

It "would be a very big mistake" , he told a press conference in the USA. 'The whole Nicaraguan people would fight back"

"When we talk about an invasion of foreign forces, we're not just talking about the Sandinista forces resisting, we're talking about the force of the whole Nicaraguan people. In Grenada the country was being run by one crazy man, General Hudson Austin, with an army of 100 crazy people who didn't fight. In Nicaragua you have 100 crazy people, but thousands of Nicaraguans who will fight."

Pastora's line is merely a statement of obvious fact: for the USA to invade Nicaragua would be a military operation more on the scale of Vietnam than any repeat of the Grenada invasion.

Even tougher would be any prospect of a US invasion of Cuba, though contingency plans for this are known to exist and a US naval task force is conducting sinister manoeuvres off the Cuban coast.

Cuban Vice President Josel Paul Viera last week warned that US landing would mean that 'there would be blood everywhere, in the streets, on the beaches, on the farms, as the people resist the invader."

The 20th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination has drawn attention back to the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco in which the USA tried and failed to promote a "pump-priming" invasion by Cuban exiles expecting to trigger an uprising against Castro; now no serious US observer can expect that more than a tiny handful of reactionaries in Cuba would support or tolerate an outright imperialist invasion.

But even in El Salvador, where a US-backed junta remains in power, the success of an American military intervention cannot be guaranteed.

Despite vast transfusions of cash and equipment, and extensive US training of Salvadorean officers, the army itself is facing a major crisis of morale as it confronts a renewed and strengthened offensive from left wing FMLN guerrillas.

One US observer declared candidly that the initiative has passed to the guerrillas, as State Department. chiefs assessed their next moves. Increasingly army units are surrendering to guerrillas without a fight * handing over supplies of US-financed weapons.

The squads that remain united - such as the US-trained "crack" Atlacatl battalion — are scarcely any less of an embarrassment, with their repeated massacres of innocent civilian men, women and children. The most recent of these was the slaughter last week of more than 100 people in the towns of Copapayo, San Nicolas and La Escopeta.

The Reagan administration has declared that it might resort to direct military involvement in El Salvador if there seemed a danger that the FMLN might take the capital. It is plain, however, that such an intervention would be no swift, "surgical"

strike but a long-term, open-ended counter-insurgency battle with every danger of spreading onto a regional level engulfing other countries of Central Whether Reagan believes that to bog down US forces in such a struggle would be less of an electoral liability in 1984 than a possible loss of control by the present ruling junta could be the most decisive factor in shaping events.

There is no doubt however that the heavy handed threats of US intervention lent added credence by the Grenada invasion, have already had an impact in holding back the development of any solidarity or more overt military links between Cuba/ USSR and Nicaragua, and between the Sandinistas and the FMLN fighters in El Salvador. Apparently FMLN leaders themselves are beginning to hold back for fear that too many military victories could provoke US involvement.

This in turn strengthens the hand of the reformist politicians who represent the Salvadorean PDR opposition, as they seek out some form of deal with the US imperialists.

In this endeavour, too, the pace of events and the outcome rests at present with the decisions of Reagan and his State Department and Pentagon advisors.

The only way in which this stranglehold can be broken through is working class action in the USA and internationally in solidarity with the struggles of the workers and peasants of Central America and the Caribbean against imperialism, its "contra" armies and death squads and its stooge regimes.

Labour Group for Human Rights in Sri Lanka PUBLIC MEETING TONY BENN *JEREMY CORBYN, MP Rajes Balsubramaniyam (Labour Group/Tamil Women's League)

John Chowcatt (ASTMS)

Speaker from EELAM Solidarity Campaign THURSDAY, Dec 1,7pm Hampstead Town Hall

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Haverstock Hill, NW3 (opp Belsize Park tube)