ABSTRACT
The congressional debate that began in 1979 over US policy in Central America has been one of the most bitter and divisive since the Vietnam War. A competing legacy was left by the Vietnam War. The post-Vietnam timing of the Nicaraguan revolution and of the Salvadoran insurgency held out the possibility that US policy in Central America would not be defined by the reflexive anticommunist interventionism of the postwar period. The Vietnam experience had profound implications for the Western Hemisphere. After decades of tolerating or installing regimes in Latin America which coupled pro-US stability with suppression of their own populations, policymakers in this country began to question the nature of the regimes receiving US support. The Reagan administration came into office with the stated intention of "drawing the line" against communism in El Salvador. The early policy clashes between the Reagan administration and Congress resulted from the administration's characterization of the conflict and its actions to resolve it.
