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Response to Grenada invasion inaccuracy

Feb 10, 2011 Letters

Dear Editor,
Mr. Freddie Kissoon made a faux pas when he stated that the Grenada invasion took place in 1985 (column February 8). I am very familiar with the Grenada invasion as I wrote extensively about it at the time and subsequently when I was doing graduate studies in International relations. I also studied world revolutions under Prof. Kaplan, an expert in the field.
The Grenada invasion occurred on October 23, 1983. The invasion was a result of what then US President Ronald Reagan described as threat to US national security. Reagan had issued warnings about “Soviet-Cuban militarization” in Grenada and was worried that the USSR was building a long airplane runway at Pt. Salines that could be used against the US. Reagan did not want another Socialist state in the Caribbean. As Mr. Kissoon, himself, repeatedly penned in earlier columns, he was in Grenada to help build Socialism.
The invasion of Grenada must be seen as a small part of the rivalry between the U.S. and Cuba during the Reagan years.
After the Grenadian army killed Prime Minister Maurice Bishop On October 13, 1983, the US began planning for the invasion. Mr. Kissoon was enamoured with Bishop and so was I.
The coup against Bishop gave the US the excuse it needed to carry out the invasion of Grenada to rid it of Marxism/Socialism.
The army’s use of extreme violence (a massacre) against government officials and ordinary citizens worried the US given that some 900 American medical students were studying at a campus near the airport. The US convinced the leaders of the small OECS islands to support the invasion. Prime Minister Eugenia Charles of Dominica was flown to Washington to give approval of the invasion appearing on national TV. It was clear an invasion had begun.
Mr. Kissoon wrote of people being killed. Reports say 49 Grenadians were killed along with a couple hundred wounded. Some 29 Cubans were killed along with hundreds wounded. And 19 Americans were killed along with over 100 wounded.
I do not think it is a case of Mr. Kissoon not knowing the year of invasion and others killed, but a lapse of memory as often happens to so many of us with age.
Vishnu Bisram

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