(2 of 2)
No nation, though, was in a greater quandary than Britain. From Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on down, the country was seething. "I am totally and utterly against Communism and terrorism," Thatcher told listeners on a popular radio phone-in program. "But if you are going to pronounce a new law that wherever Communism reigns against the will of the people, the U.S. shall enter, then we are going to have really terrible wars in the world." Thatcher made the same point six times during the broadcast.
For once, it seemed, the government, the Labor opposition and the public were united in bitter resentment against the U.S. A London Sunday Times poll showed that 73% believed the U.S. President would violate the terms of cruise missile deployment by firing them even if the British government objected.
Behind the scenes, many of Thatcher's ministers were showing deep alarm over what they considered Reagan's anti-Communist obsessions. Said a senior Cabinet official: "One is beginning to agonize about what the President is likely to do next." A top-level diplomat added that "the U.S. must stop believing its own propaganda about Reds under every bed."
In West Germany only the leftist opposition could afford to indulge in that kind of indignation, and the Social Democrats proceeded to revel in it. Said SPD Foreign Policy Spokesman Karsten Voigt: "Now those who argue that we have to trust the Reagan Administration are told, 'Just look at Grenada.' " He added that the invasion would strengthen the demand for some kind of veto power over the American finger on the trigger controlling nuclear weapons in West Germany. Said Peace Movement Leader Jo Leinen: "Instead of associating ourselves with the aggressive militaristic tendencies in Washington, we have to try to go our own way."
That point was made more dramatically at a huge peace demonstration in The Hague, where protesters held up a banner that said simply TODAY GRENADA, TOMORROW WOENSDRECHT! In The Netherlands, Woensdrecht has become a household name as the site of the NATO airbase where cruise missiles are scheduled to be installed. In Brussels, within hours of the Grenada invasion, a crowd of about 200 leftist demonstrators swarmed around the U.S. embassy in angry protest.
Amid the chorus of condemnation, there were also voices of support. In France, the opposition rightists and centrists generally approved of Reagan's decision. Former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing said that he was impressed with evidence that the Cubans were building an airfield far in excess of Grenada's own needs. Declared former Premier Raymond Barre: "I don't approve of military intervention in any country, but the U.S. cannot accept a destabilization process in the Caribbean." More biting was the comment from the conservative Berliner Morgenpost. Reflecting well-founded concern over the erosion of popular support for NATO, it observed that "in Europe some people urgently wait for a criticizable decision by President Reagan as an alibi for their own creeping withdrawal from the Atlantic Alliance." —By Frederick Painton. Reported by Jordan Bonfante/Paris and Gary Lee/Bonn, with other bureaus