The Grenada Invasion - Thirty Years Later

It's been nearly a quarter century since Ronald Reagan left the White House, and the conservative elements of the American media have been working overtime to convince us that the lame-brained B-movie actor was one of our greatest Presidents ever, even if he only played the President.  The Big Lie supporting this opinion was that he ended the Cold War, even though I've gone through great pains to demonstrate that Pope John Paul II did much of the heavy lifting in that endeavor during the 1980s.  Well, certainly in regard to Eastern Europe.  Inevitably, though, the Reagan cult will point to the U.S.-led military operation that took place in our own hemisphere as evidence of Reagan's role in the struggle against Communism, which took place thirty years ago this month.

I am, of course, referring to Grenada.

Grenada, a former British colony in the West Indies that became independent in 1974, had been ruled by a moderate Communist regime since 1979, but when Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was overthrown and killed in 1983 by the People's Revolutionary Army, which seated a hard-line Communist dictatorship under General Hudson Austin and sought closer relations with Fidel Castro's Cuba, President Reagan approved an invasion to stop what he feared was an attempt to build an air base that would benefit Cuban and Soviet military operations to supply Communist insurgents in Central America.  The United States and its allies - the allies being major regional "powers" such as Dominica, St Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, St. Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines - invaded Grenada on October 25, 1983, deposed General Austin, and "rescued" American medical students at Saint George's University.  Free elections were held in December 1984 after a year of an interim government, and Grenada has been a stable democracy ever since.  Well, what was so bad about all that?

Quite a few things, really.  First of all, the claim that Fidel Castro and the Soviet leadership were trying to set up an air base on Grenada was preposterous; the air strip the Cubans were building had no military applications, only capabilities for commercial jets bringing tourists.  As then-U.S. Representative Ronald Dellums (D-CA), stated from having visited Grenada earlier that year, "[I]t is my conclusion that this project is specifically now and has always been for the purpose of economic development and is not for military use."  Secondly, even if the Cubans had been attempting to establish a military presence on the island, what threat did a country like Grenada - a nation about the geographic size of Essex County, New Jersey, and with one-seventh of the population - pose to the United States? I cite Ronald Dellums again: "It is my thought that it is absurd, patronizing and totally unwarranted for the United States Government to charge that this airport poses a military threat to the United States' national security."  Good grief, how many arms to leftist insurgents in Central America could the Soviets and the Cubans possibly run through a tiny speck of an island like that, a country known more for its production of nutmeg than anything else?  Thirdly, the medical students at St. George's University - a fifth-rate medical school for American medical students who couldn't get into Harvard or Johns Hopkins - were never in danger.  They were used as an excuse to justify the invasion.  Fourth, the United Nations saw this invasion for what it was - a power grab by the United States - and condemned the invasion, calling the American action a "flagrant violation of international law."  Even Margaret Thatcher was appalled.   As a member of the British Commonwealth, Grenada maintains a political union with Britain, and Thatcher was angry over the fact that the American invasion would be seen as an unsolicited, illegal intervention in the affairs of a small, independent country by a Western power that would undermine East-West relations.  It's easy to dismiss Thatcher as wrongheaded, but not every leader could be wrongheaded. Every major Western nation was against the operation, and the UN General Assembly voted 108 to 9 to condemn it.  Reagan's response? "It didn't upset my breakfast at all."   

Perhaps I and other liberals are being unfair.  After all, the Grenadian people were able to establish a multi-party democracy after the operation ended, and they celebrate the day of the invasion as a national holiday.  But it many respects, the invasion of Grenada had been just the latest in a series of American military interventions designed to impose a paternalistic, and yes, racist hegemony over the mestizo/mulatto- and black-dominated nations of Latin America and the Caribbean, a form of hemispheric domination on the part of the U.S. that dates back to the mid-nineteenth century, before the Soviet Union existed . . . and continues 22 years after the Soviet Union dissolved.   Is it any wonder the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington (including Dellums, himself black) joined the United Nations to condemn the U.S. invasion of this black-majority country?  

I must admit, in the interest of full disclosure, that I actually wrote an essay in college defending Reagan and the Grenada invasion on the basis that it was a necessary operation to strengthen our national security.  Against what? Well, I never could figure out exactly what.  Thirty years later,  I still can't.  It's sort of amazing that I made it through college, with that kind of critical acumen, and even got a passing grade for that essay . . . but then, I was only a part-time college student in 1983 anyway.