674 5, 1987 CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS butchered). In the final stages of the syndrome the pa- he following exchangetook place at President tient starts to make excuses for the U.S. Administration Napole6n Duarte’s press conference here on Oc- that even the Administration is too shy to offer. tober 29, three days after the murder of Herbert Before the flag-kissing photo opportunity Duarte had ac- TErnesto Anaya, who headed the unofficial Salva- cused the Sandinista government of being responsible for doran Human Rights Commission: the civil war in El Salvador, a claim that no Washington hawk has had the face to make. He has stated publicly that wlll he was quite unaware of the use of Ilopango Air Force Base to of for the illegal supply of forces. Ilopango is about of of In twenty minutes by car from the center of San Salvador and is the headquarters of the Salvadoran Air Force. If Duarte 1s did not know that it was being used to attack Nicaragua, 1 to then he has effectively ceded power to an arrogant foreign to m~nlmum of You patron. he did know, while affirming the contrary and of while arguing that the flow of arms was in the other direc- of tion, then he has effectively ceded power to an arrogant U.S. not if foreign patron. In true Sadat style, Duarte has also “written” a book, of titled My This volume was co-authored by Diana Page and published onlyin English. It is dedicated to, One could make a number of observations about this among others, the Boy Scout movement (a large statue to reply. First, of course, we do know who killed Abraham Baden-Powell is one of the unexpected delights of the capi- Lincoln. And though many in the United States do go miss- tal’s bourgeois district) and is not available in El Salvador. ing every year, it is rare to find that they have been kid- When Sadat produced a similar book in the aftermath of his napped and murdered by the Highway Patrol or by an aux- Nobel Prize, he was careful to excise most of the shady po- iliary police force attached to the I.R.S. Then ;ne has to litical past he had described in an earlier volume. Duarte, notice the uncharacteristic modesty of the third sentence. who is jealous of President Oscar Arias’s Nobel Prize and Duarte has been President for only threeand a half years,but who claims credit for the Arias “peace process,” chiefly im- before that he was the leading civilian member of the ruling putes shadiness to others. He contrives to imply that many junta. His time inoffice coincided withthe death of no fewer of the death squad killings have been the work of the guer- than 30,000 of his fellow citizens. All these crimes, exceptfor rillas, who seek to magnify the contradictions. Experience the murder of Archbishop Romero, havenow been amnestied. and investigation have shown that there is no need to simu- If Duarte were anywhere near as popular in El Salvador late rightist atrocities in El Salvador. I had the opportunity as he is in the United States, he would be a very successful to ask Maria Julia Hernhndez, the tireless head of the hu- politician indeed. What is striking about him is the extent to man rights office Tutela Legal at the archbishopric, if she which he believes in his own image:an image reflected inthe thought that the left had indeed been shooting the civilian coversof rather than in the hearts and minds of opposition as a provocation. Her pretended merriment did Salvadorans. On his latest visit to Washington, in October, not mask contempt for the suggestion. he embarrassed even his fulsome hosts by stooping and kiss- On November 15, the last Sunday of my stay, Archbishop ing the American flag. There 1s hardly a wall in downtown Arturo Rivera y Damas preached a homily in whichhe San Salvador that does not bear an ironic tribute, in poster warned that the death squads were backin business. He or graffito form, to this ab~ectgesture. gave details ofseveral cases, including the murder of a Duarte is suffering from an advanced case of the Sadat church worker. Common to all the slaylngs, according to syndrome, an affliction for which there is no known cure. Tutela Legal, 1s the involvement of army and police person- Typically, the victimbegins to count political success in nel. President Duarte 1s forced to describe complaints of this termsof the number of foreign celebritiesvisited or type as “irrelevant.” He has taken the side of the armed ceived. Cravings for U.S. military aid are experienced and forces, and the armed forces have a short way with politi- become tragically harder to assuage even when thedosage is clans who are halfhearted about them. When U.S. Ambas- increased to life-threatening levels. One dinner at the White sador Edwin Corr, speaking from his bunker in the center of House isimagined to equal fifty meetingswith domestic the city, said that he saw his job in El Salvador as “making political groups, A dinner at the White House withwife sure the cattle get to Cheyenne,’’ he had hit on more than a equals a hundred such humdrum encounters. The sufferer phrase with which to offend all Salvadorans. He was trying begins to fetishlze editorials In U.S. newspapers while ignor- to say that there would be no military coup on his watch. In Ing the humbler indigenous prints (an admittedly easy task a way, there hasn’t been one. The armed forces have an- in San Salvador, where and del nexed the Christian Democrats without the trouble or awk- have beenbombed and closed, and the latter’s editor wardness of a seizure of the Presidential Palace. .