MY COUNTRY
Reflections on the School of the Americas
by David McPhail
[1-26-05, replacing an earlier version of 3-29-04]
On Saturday and Sunday my wife and I with perhaps 16,000 others from across
the country, participated in a protest of the School of the Americas at Fort
Benning, Georgia. I can remember hearing about the "School" through actions
of Amnesty International in the 1980s, and later in the 1990s, in a more
personal way, when visiting family in Central America and Mexico. Through a
daughter's work for the Center for Global Education, I had the opportunity
of meeting a lot of folks concerned about human rights. This concern did not
come from devotion to an abstract principle, but from their life situations.
Often the name SOA was mentioned. Clearly there was no doubt in their minds
that SOA was a training ground for those who threaten, intimidate, imprison,
torture and even kill those considered insurgents.
At the end of 2000 the School of the Americas was closed and then reopened
on Jan. 17, 2001 under a new name - the Western Hemisphere Institute for
Security Cooperation. The congressman from Columbus, Georgia, reassured
local folks that nothing had really changed except the name.
Retired Major Blair, who taught at the School in the 1980s, has testified
for the SOAWatch defense. He says that while it is apparent that the school
no longer teaches the techniques of torture and the torture manuals have
been removed, it is also true that the curriculum, teachers and approach of
the School is the same as in the past. A recent commandant of the school
says there is no longer a need for teaching "more aggressive cold war
tactics." What is he talking about? More to the point how did my country
come to support such an institution?
In Paul Krugman's book,
The Great Unraveling,
he makes a very powerful case in the introduction that the present
administration is run by a very radical cadre in both domestic and foreign
affairs. There is nothing conservative about these conservatives. Though
they may offer rationales for their policies that pretend they are not so
radical, if these rationales don't work they are quickly cast aside. The
most obvious example of this is the various reasons given for going to war
in Iraq. At this point Krugman has a very interesting paragraph that I would
like to quote.
He says, "I should admit at this point that I am not entirely sure
why
this is happening - why we are now faced with such a radical challenge to
our political and social system. Rich people did very well in the 1990s; why
this hatred of anything that looks remotely like income redistribution?
Corporations have flourished; why this urge to strip away modest
environmental regulation? Churches of all denominations have prospered; why
this attack on the separation of church and state? American power and
influence have never been greater; why this drive to destroy our alliances
and embark on military adventures?"
In the deepest sense I cannot answer Krugman's
Why,
without resort to theological musings on the nature of evil or old bromides
about the aphrodisiac of power. I do believe though that we will find the
seeds of an answer if we look at our relationships with our Latin-American
neighbors. And to understand those relationships we have to go back a ways
in our own history. We may, as a nation, have a short memory span, but other
nations that have known defeat don't forget so easily. I know. I am a son of
the South. On one level what our actual foreign policy is - what frames the
choices we make is less determined by how much we know about other countries
- than what our experiences are and how we understand them.
HIGH SCHOOL HISTORY LESSON RELEARNED
The Monroe Doctrine, formulated by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, in
the 1820s, warned the European powers to stay out of Latin American
countries that had thrown off the yoke of colonialism. At least that was the
way it was interpreted in my high school history class. A less benign
understanding of this action or a later interpretation of it might be that
we were really saying to the rest of the world, "This is our sphere of
influence, so bug out." Of course we did not yet have the financial muscle
to be the only meddler in waters South of the border. Great Britain was the
big cheese, economically. We still had a whole continent to develop/exploit
and our own civil war to endure as we worked through our 'manifest destiny.'
Whenever one ventures to review some of the events of history it is
difficult to know where to begin. I have chosen to begin with my third grade
class led by Miss Potter who taught us to sing My Country 'tis of Thee. How
many know it? Can you remember when you learned it? Let's sing the first
verse.
My country 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the Pilgrims' pride,
From every mountainside,
Let freedom ring!
Samuel Smith wrote this hymn in 1832 when Andrew Jackson was president. The
era of the band of aristocratic brothers from Washington to the second Adams
was past and now the torch of freedom and equality had been passed to the
common man. From reports we have of Jackson's first inaugural the common man
almost tore the White House down in a drunken orgy of good feeling. I
suspect that Samuel Smith was not unaware of the country's failings, but his
pure joy in the idea of America is without a doubt an expression of one of
driving forces behind what came to be known as Manifest Destiny. America was
seen as unique among the nations of the world. Our destiny is to carry the
torch of liberty to the world. John L. O'Sullivan who first coined the term
in the 1840s explained the concept in an article of 1839, "…our national
birth was the beginning of a new history…. It is our unparalleled glory that
we have no reminiscences of battlefields, but in defence of humanity, of the
oppressed of all nations, of the rights of conscience, the rights of
personal enfranchisement. …(for )We are the nation of human progress, and
who will, what can, set limits to our onward march?…All this will be our
future history to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of
man…For this blessed mission to the nations of the world…has America been
chosen;…."
AMERICA'S ORIGINAL PEOPLES
Yet the darker side of Manifest Destiny came with a land hunger that made
our young country into a destroyer of Indian Nations of all sorts of
uniqueness. I am going to assume you know something of the history of the
indigenous peoples of this continent…the trail of tears that has echoes even
today or else how come the bizarre connection of tiny "tribes" and huge
gambling casinos other than a vague guilt we know in our bones. Custard's
Last Stand was really the Indians last stand, but their defeat militarily
was not the end of a crushing cultural destruction that continued well into
the lifetime of many of us present with its consequences even today.
Languages and beliefs and ancient customs were suppressed as a matter of
government policy - in schools, on reservations not to mention a sea of
broken treaties and the loss of huge sums of monies our government was
keeping for tribal benefit unexplained even today. All these actions were
repeatedly justified by pointing to the barbarism of Indians and their need
for the civilizing and Christianizing influence of Americans. This is a
pattern of action and justification that we will see again and again.
William Sloan Coffin has a quote somewhere to the effect that nations always
act in their self-interest, but justify their actions in high moral terms.
WAR WITH MEXICO
If it was our manifest destiny to people the "vacant lands" of this
continent i.e. Indians didn't count, still Mexico was a nation whose
independence we recognized. In 1836 Sam Houston and the Texans defeated
General Santa Anna and Texas declared its independence. This was never
accepted by Mexico. There was no doubt what Houston and others wanted. In
1845 Texas was accepted into the USA and Mexico's efforts to resists this
led to the war in 1846 and in 1848 to the Treaty of Guadalupe that was
basically delivered at gunpoint. This war, provoked by the USA, led to
Mexico losing not only Texas, but what is present day California, Nevada,
Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and part of Wyoming. With the stroke of a pen
100,000 Mexican citizens became American Citizens though 2nd
class ones in most cases. This war had involved 115,000 American troops who
suffered 17,000 casualties with 1700 deaths from combat plus another 11,000
plus from disease. I am still trying to discover the figures for Mexico. One
of the American diplomats present at the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe
wrote to his wife that a Mexican counterpart said to him you must be proud
today and your pride is equal to our humiliation. He responded at the time
that both nations must keep their eyes fixed on peace, but to his wife he
wrote that never have I been so ashamed of my country's actions. Then
Captain Ulysses S. Grant shared these feelings as well. Of course many
thought the Mexicans little better than the Indians. Even our great singer
of democracy, Walt Whitman said, "What has miserable inefficient
Mexico--with her superstition, her burlesque upon freedom, her actual
tyranny by the few over the many--what has she to do with the great mission
of peopling the new world with a noble race? Be it ours, to achieve that
mission!"
I
suspect most Americans were shocked at the revelations of torture and
humiliation practiced on Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Perhaps you were
reminded of My Lai and all that stood for in Viet Nam. However, I would
maintain that a closer parallel could be drawn to the actions of graduates
of the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. Nowhere do we get a
clearer picture of the dark side of American foreign policy than in our
relations with Latin America. Understanding the roots of this story requires
us to look at a piece of American History that has been clarified for me
most recently by John Judis in
The Folly of Empire.
IMPERIALISM AND AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY*
By 1890, the USA was an economic power larger than any
other, but so little recognized that only Great Britain had an ambassador
stationed in Washington. By 1900 the U.S. was producing 23 percent of the
world's manufacturing goods compared to 18% for former leader GB. This was a
time when increasingly the "Great Nations" were those that had colonies in
Africa and Asia. America's only real foreign policy seemed to be trade and
was especially concerned with the spheres of influence being established in
China by Japan, Great Britain, France and Germany. However, when McKinley,
the last President to have fought in the Civil War, came to power in 1896
he, like his Democratic predecessor Cleveland, refused to send troops to aid
the rebels in Cuba despite widespread sympathy for their cause. In his
inaugural address he said: "Our diplomacy should seek nothing more and
accept nothing less than due us. We want no wars of conquest; we must avoid
the temptation of territorial aggression. War should never be entered upon
until every agency of peace has failed; peace is preferable to war in almost
every contingency. Arbitration is the true method of settlement of
international as well as local or individual differences."
In 18 months McKinley had not only gone to war with
Spain, he had seized the Spanish Empire in the Caribbean and in the Pacific
and refused to grant real independence to these possessions. How could such
a sudden change come about? High tariffs to protect American industry were
being questioned. Certainly the desire for exports to the rest of the world
was highly desired. Perhaps more important were the informal meetings held
earlier in the 90s by a small group of friends who were concerned that the
USA assume its rightful place among the imperial nations of the world or
else be cut out of economic expansion. These folks meeting in Washington
were not just any group. Except for Senator Henry Cabot Lodge though they
were not persons well known at the time, but with names like Theodore
Roosevelt, Alfred Mahan later Admiral, Henry Adams, Brooks Adams, John Hay
one time Secretary to Abraham Lincoln and later secretary of state under
McKinley/Roosevelt, they were comers. These were people who carried on
correspondence with the editors of
Harper's Magazine,
the
New York Tribune
and others. Even earlier the intellectual ground work was being laid by
people like John Fiske, the principal exponent of Social Darwinism in the
US, who contended in an article in
Harper's that
the English race was "destined to dominate the entire world during the 20th
century through colonizing other countries with its rapidly multiplying
numbers. Over the next century nations will unite under Anglo Saxon" control
"The time will come…when it will be possible …to speak of the United States
as stretching from pole to pole," he wrote. He was joined by Josiah Strong,
a leader in the one group of Americans that really had a sustaining interest
in the world "overseas" - the protestant Missionary movement. Strong's book,
Our Country, was
the best-selling nonfiction book of the 19th
Century. It sold 175,000 copies in a decade. This movement to evangelize the
world in one generation was a rallying cry in much of the dominant
Protestant Churches. Strong believed that the Anglo-Saxons would be the
great agents of change.
SPAIN CUBA AND THE PHILIPPINES*
In the years just prior to the war of 1898, Spain
fought an independence movement in Cuba using an early form of concentration
camps. Thousands died from starvation and disease. Yet it wasn't Roosevelt
and Lodge who were the loudest voices opposing Spain, but the Protestant
Press and populist Democrats. Protestant leaders already hostile to Catholic
Spain called on McKinley to intervene. One Methodist Journal boasted that if
the US went to war "every Methodist preacher will be a recruiting officer."
Populists from the South and West, who later would oppose any hint of
Imperialism, identified with the rebel Cubans, most of whom were poor
farmers.
McKinley felt he had to respond so he sent the
battleship Maine to Havana. On Feb. 15 the Maine blew up killing 266
Americans. It was never shown that this was the result of Spanish actions,
but it didn't matter, the match had been struck and in less than 3 months
the Spanish were defeated. Cuba was conquered in 3 months, and Admiral Dewey
defeated the Spanish Navy in Manila Bay in one morning with no loss of
American lives. The nation was ecstatic. Judis quotes many sources to show
how thrilled folks were by this turn of events. I am most taken by those
from religious leaders…the prominent liberal cleric, Lyman Abbott became a
convert and said, "The radical difference…between one who believes that
American ideas and institutions are good for the whole world and the one who
thinks they are adapted only to the continent of North America - is not that
the former is an imperialist and the latter a democrat, but that the former
is a more radical, a more enthusiastic, and a more optimistic democrat than
the latter." More dramatically another journal says, "The question is, shall
we back out of and back down from, our responsibility and duty, and
selfishly abandon peoples who are holding up their manacled hands to us and
praying us not to desert them?"
Well, those outstretched arms soon turned to fists,
especially in the Philippines, when it became clear that the Americans were
not just removing the Spanish, but taking their place as an occupying power.
The resulting war involving 120,000 troops went on for 14 years despite
Roosevelt declaring in April 1900 that the insurrection in the Philippine
Islands was over. Mission Accomplished. More than 4,000 American troops
died; more than 200,000 Filipino civilians and soldiers were killed. While
there were never verified claims of Filipino atrocities that were reported
in the American press, there is no doubt to the claims of Americans
torturing and killing Filipino prisoners and even of massacres. Journalist
George Kennan, the great-uncle of the diplomat, saw the "deep-seated and
implacable resentment of American rule." He said, "We have offered them many
verbal reassurances of benevolent intentions; but at the same time, we have
killed their unresisting wounded; we hold 1500 to 2000 in prison… and we are
resorting directly or indirectly to the Spanish inquisitorial methods… that
the present generation of Filipinos will forget these things is hardly to be
expected."
I must admit I never gave the Spanish American war
more than a passing thought and didn't even know of what went on in the
Philippines. When no one is accountable for a disastrous policy then
historical amnesia seems to result as long as your side won! Roosevelt, to
his credit, could change. He wrote in 1907, "we have continually to
accommodate ourselves to conditions as they actually are and not as we would
have them be…." He said no to other opportunities to colonize. While Judis
believes he never was able to truly see that whatever its motivations
imperialistic actions provoked a nationalistic response, but at least he saw
there was a problem.
WILSON TAKES ON MEXICO*
Woodrow Wilson, while never as enthusiastic a
supporter of Imperialism as Roosevelt, nevertheless cheered the American
takeover of the Spanish empire when he became president in 1913. He boasted
that he could transform Latin America, if not the rest of the world, into
constitutional democracies in America's image. Wilson came into office
furious at Mexico's Huerta who had assassinated Francisco Madero, Mexico's
first truly freely elected President, just weeks before Wilson's inaugural.
That fall Huerta had himself declared president after a rigged election.
Roosevelt and Wilson's own state department urged Wilson to accept Huerta,
but Wilson did everything he could in the next five months to get Huerta out
of power. But as Judis says, "He could not even get Huerta's revolutionary
opponents to cooperate with an American government that appeared to be
trying to impose its will on Mexico." While fighting Huerta, they joined him
in denouncing America's attempt to intervene in the country's internal
affairs. Wilson appeared to understand the dilemma he faced in Mexico. If
the US tried to impose a new government on Mexico, whatever its program, the
act itself would destroy whatever possibility the government had of
succeeding.
And still when Wilson sent 6,000 troops to Vera Cruz
to stop a shipment of German arms to Huerta, he was stunned that there was
active resistance and not welcoming crowds from the poorly armed defendants.
Later, with help from other Latin American nations he disentangled the US
and learned his lesson. And when his Secretary of War urged Wilson to order
American forces to Mexico City, Wilson replied, "We shall have no right at
any time to intervene in Mexico to determine the way in which the Mexicans
are to settle their own affairs… Many things may happen of which we do not
approve and which could not happen in the Untied States, but I say very
solemnly that that is no affair of ours…. There are in my judgment no
conceivable circumstances which would make it right for us to direct by
force or by threat of force the internal processes of what is (a) profound
revolution…." More than that, of course, Wilson was the first American
leader who truly grasped the need for international institutions to provide
solutions to international conflicts.
America could not go it alone. If America wanted to
exercise leadership in the world it had to be done through alliances.
Despite his immense popularity following WWI in Europe, Wilson's efforts to
bring forward an international policy emphasizing human rights and a League
of Nations came to naught, not just in Europe, but in the US as well. And so
began a period of renewed isolationism until WWII. The isolationism didn't
apply to Latin America as a continuation of gunboat diplomacy through the
20s was only interrupted by FDRs Good Neighbor policy that began under
Hoover's Secretary of State, Henry Stimson.
FDR
In 1936, FDR explained, "Long before I returned to
Washington as President of the United States, I had made up my mind that,
pending what might be called a more opportune moment on other continents,
the United States could best serve the cause of a peaceful humanity by
setting an example. That was why on the 4th
of March 1933, I made the following declaration: 'in the field of world
policy I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor - the
neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects
the rights of others - the neighbor who respects his obligations and
respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of
neighbors.'…The American republics to the south of us have been ready always
to cooperate with the United States on a basis of equality and mutual
respect, but before we inaugurated the good-neighbor policy there was among
them resentment and fear because certain administrations in Washington had
slighted their national pride and their sovereign rights. In pursuance of
the good-neighbor policy, and because in my younger days I had learned many
lessons in the hard school of experience, I stated that the United States
was opposed definitely to armed intervention." And by golly, he meant it so
that during his 12 years plus there were no such interventions.
Still throughout most of the 20th
century, sending in the Marines often became necessary to protect American
Companies. "The Chair of Standard Oil, in 1946 urged U.S. companies to
'assume the responsibility of the majority stockholders in this corporation
known as the world.' The goal of U.S. foreign policy was, he said, to insure
the 'safety and stability of our foreign investments'"
** I would submit that this more than
any fear of communism, was the reason the School of the Americas was
established in 1946 in Panama to train the Latin American military in
counter-insurgency warfare.
THE COLD WAR AND LATIN AMERICAN REVOLUTIONS
However, the advent of the cold war did provide a
whole new umbrella for actions against regimes that were deemed hostile to
the interest of the US. Revolutionary movements in Latin America have all
borrowed from the Marxists' lexicon, even though they were far removed from
the industrial societies whose contradictions Marx had predicted. Cuba comes
first to mind. However, before Cuba, there was an elected President in
Guatemala who was committed to "radical" reforms such as allowing unions to
organize, a very moderate land reform program and requiring the United Fruit
Company to pay taxes. The CIA removed him in 1954 and this was the beginning
of a civil war that has cost over 200,000 lives. This was a very brutal war.
Most of those who carried out the war were innocent people of Mayan descent.
Those who gave the orders at the top were those who were trained at the SOA.
We did not do the killing, but steadfastly supported those who did. This was
a war waged against civilians, especially the indigenous who were deemed
insurgents. You may remember President Clinton apologized to the people of
Guatemala for these actions. I will skip over LBJ and the Dominican Republic
or Nixon and the destruction of the democratically elected President Allende
in Chile, which was one of the few Latin American countries where the
military had been subordinate to civilian authority. Let us leave aside the
Iran/Contra scandal and all the different ways our government waged war
against Nicaragua, including the Argentine general we got to train the
Contra troops, who was also a SOA graduate. I don't want anyone to think
that I believe the US is solely responsible for all the evil that has been
committed against the people of the Americas, but nowhere do we bear a
greater responsibility. The neocons like to accuse the Liberals of "blaming
Americans first." What strikes me is the almost complete lack of
accountability for America's actions especially in Latin America.
Perhaps I should backtrack a bit here and say that
only the cataclysm of WWII allowed FDR and others to introduce a whole new
way for nations relating through the UN, IMF, World Bank, and GATT. While
WWII helped bring forward a new framework for international relations, the
actual workings were badly compromised by the cold war and all this led to a
new darker actor in American Foreign policy - the CIA whose full actions we
may never know as its work has been generously funded in the dark. Despite
the Church committee's actions following Watergate there is now serious
question as to the truth about much of America's foreign policy actions
beginning with the Dulles brothers under Eisenhower.
FOREIGN AID
Some may remember a time after WWII, when through the
Marshall Plan and other programs, the US sought to rebuild Europe, and even
later extend help to the "Third World." In 1956-57 I was a Junior Year
Abroad student in India, on a program sponsored by the Presbyterian Church.
One American family I came to know was there as a part of the Technical
Cooperation Mission to India. A part of that work was teaching at the Ag
School, and also helping a small factory build plows and other equipment
farmers needed. This kind of aid, following the last "good war," was money
in the bank of world opinion for decades to come. Unfortunately little of
this reached the peoples of the Americas. Following the Kennedy
confrontations with Cuba there was a "new" program developed specific to
Latin America - the Alliance for Progress. It recognized that poverty and
injustice was a seedbed for communism. Economic development for more than
just the rich elite was needed. However, the alliance provided only a slight
increase in economic aid while a big increase in guns. By the 1960s critics
of the misuse of foreign aid had been answered increasingly by the US
turning to Loans not Grants. We were giving money to help, but this was to
be repaid.
"PRIVATE" LOANS NOT GRANTS
Then in the early 1970s there was a new development.
Instead of loaning money, government to government, a new program was
initiated in which private American banks would loan money South of the
border with an implied promise that the US would make sure they were repaid.
This way the US government was entirely out of the aid business. Almost.
There were still guns and the SOA. Some may remember that interest rates
were very low in 1970. For the Bbnks it was strictly a no-lose proposition -
above market adjustable interest rates, guaranteed by the US government.
During this time in Texas it was an open secret that large amounts of
"private" money were flowing into Texas banks from Mexico. Only later did we
learn that during this period there was more money flowing out of Mexico
into the US, than the reverse. If you throw lots of easy money into a very
corrupt government you know who is left with the bill - the Mexican people!
By the end of the 1970s interest rates were at an all
time high. Now Latin America had huge debts that could not be paid. The only
way these countries could continue to exist economically was to borrow more
money, especially since their rich elite paid little or no taxes. The price
of these "new" loans was giving up control of their economy to the IMF and
the World Bank and other intergovernmental agencies. One requirement was
that they must open their markets; however, "open" is a one-way street. One
crop in abundance South of the border is sugar cane, but we still protect
our sugar industry with quotas and price supports. Nowhere is agriculture
more subsidized than in the US. The state of Iowa can produce more corn than
the whole of Mexico and sell it to Mexico cheaper than Mexico can produce
it. Think about that! Corn is not just another crop in Mexico for it has
profound spiritual significance. Until NAFTA and the end of price supports,
in the worst of times, the peasant could return to village land to raise a
small crop to feed his family with a little left over to market. Without
this ancient safety net we see a steady stream of "undocumented workers"
headed to
Norteamerica.
However, leveraging the debt has become our preferred approach to protecting
our interests in Latin America.
WHY WE NEED THE IRON FIST WITH THE THREE PIECE SUITS
I must step back and say that during the late 1970s,
which was Carter's presidency, 75 years of the Somoza family's despotic
reign in Nicaragua was overthrown (his death squads were trained at the SOA).
While this was accomplished with a broad coalition there were a lot of
socialists involved. They were not going to receive any help from us, so
they turned to the USSR, China and Cuba. Their commitment to a broad social
program of land reform, education, literacy, and medical care meant they
were highly suspect. Anyone who visited Nicaragua during this time must have
seen what a poor joke it was to consider them in any way a military threat
to the US. Perhaps our real fear was of a "communist" regime near our border
proselytizing for communism. Or perhaps it was the domino theory
transplanted to Central America, where one country after another would fall
under the sway of Russia. At this point Carter was raising our hopes by
talking about human rights, but when the possibility of another socialist
regime coming to power in El Salvador arose, military aid came to the fore,
despite Bishop Oscar Romero's pleas to Carter to suspend all military aid.
Shortly after that graduates of the SOA assassinated Romero. Then, the
terrible war against civilians continued. During the war the U.S. was
spending $1.5 million
daily in a
country of 6.2 million people. Our weaponry and military training made life
difficult for the "insurgents" in the countryside, but in the cities the SOA
trained graduates led death squads who waged another war against an unarmed
civilian population.
The annual protest outside Fort Benning, the home of
the SOA/WHISC since 1985, is scheduled for the weekend nearest the
anniversary of Nov. 16, 1989. That was the date of the massacre of the six
Jesuits priests, their coworker and her teenage daughter at the hands of SOA
graduates who had returned from Fort Benning just two weeks previously.
During this time progressive religious people, especially those associated
with liberation theology and the lay movement of Base Christian Communities,
were targets for death and destruction. In the 1990s the liberal economic
model worked well for the US with NAFTA leading the way in protecting our
interests without involving us so directly with regimes who keep killing
priests and nuns.
After the fall of the Wall in Berlin and the collapse
of the old Soviet empire it has become increasingly difficult to see the
military aid to Latin American countries, including the SOA, as anything
other than protection for the naked economic self-interest of the US, though
attempts have been made to reposition the purpose of the SOA as fighting
drugs and terrorism.
THE EXTENT OF OUR MILITARY TRAINING
Along the way, those who oppose the SOA have learned
some things. Did you know that each year the US trains 100,000 military
personnel from other countries at 275 different installations in the US and
in 150 other countries! SOA/WHISC is only the premier school in the US for
those from Latin America. A recent Amnesty International report***
calls for a suspension of training at the SOA/WHISEC and an independent
commission of inquiry to investigate the school. Even more disturbing to me
has been the growing realization that the school and other similar programs,
are not some rogue elements in the military, as a
New York Times
editorial once described them, subverting our more democratic and
humanitarian impulses.
NO! The SOA has
been doing the real work, often very dirty work, that our government
believes it needs to protect our way of life, to protect our advantages, to
protect our economic interests in the world.
Clearly the economic option is not working in
Colombia. Colombia looks like another El Salvador. They are sending more and
more students to WHISC. The guerillas are entrenched and violent but the
military has learned the newest tactic whereby they are not the ones doing
all the killing and nowadays the vast majority of the dirty work is done by
paramilitary groups - hit men trained and armed by the military, often right
next to army bases. Human Rights Watch reported recently that 85% of the
killing in that country is done by paramilitary - really private armies.
This is an approach we came to understand first hand
in Chiapas, Mexico. During this period Mexico was the biggest customer of
the SOA. Acteal, a small community of Christians sympathetic to the cause of
the Zapatistas but opposed to violence, were themselves the victims of
terrible violence when a paramilitary group descended on them while many of
the women and children were praying for peace. Seven men, twenty-two women
and eighteen boys and girls were murdered with high powered weapons over a
period of hours within a mile of the nearest army base where nothing was
heard. Certainly for those of us who have followed the story of Latin
America countries, the actions at Abu Ghraib and probably Guantanamo and
other places in Afghanistan and Iraq should be no surprise.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
How can we combat this narrow view of our national
self-interest? Our country's interests are identified with a few large
transnational companies. One thing we can say for the present administration
is that there is no pussy footing around the issue of "national
self-interest." I don't expect anytime soon to see Brother Bush apologizing
to the people of El Salvador or Nicaragua.
What we need is a broad-based change in our foreign
policy, in our approach to other countries and to international bodies as
well. How can we bring about such changes? How can we deal with our
complicity in murder, torture and destruction thought necessary to protect
our interests? As an American I want to work for a broader view of "national
self interest." As a church person I know that partisan politics can be very
divisive, but I hope the above has shown that what we are dealing with is
not truly partisan. I oppose every policy that makes military force the
principal means of carrying out our "interest" in the world. It should be
clear now that it is not our State Department but our Defense Department and
the CIA that are calling the shots.
A good first step toward that goal would be to take
action to close the SOA/WHISC. To do that we must get the closing on the
political agenda. One part of that is writing our congress people.
Another thing you can do is to tell people you know
about the school. In my experience the School of the Americas and what it
represents is just not known. While most people believe in supporting our
troops, it is up to us to see that this does not get translated into an
open-ended commitment to train (penetrate and control?) all the militaries
of the world. Through SOAWatch you can go on record opposing the school and
asking for accountability. And perhaps each November you, or a group in
which you are active, can sponsor someone to attend the Protest at Columbus,
Georgia.
Don't think the protest is a Sunday school picnic,
though it is truly a celebratory event. Beginning in 2001, each year has
seen new roadblocks that make life more difficult for those who protest at
Fort Benning: a large gate has been built at the main entrance, which
apparently is closed only during the third week in November; all who protest
are now forced to go through a checkpoint and be "wanded." The protest is
surrounded entirely by local police who take pictures of protesters. In 2003
loud music was played to drown out the protest. What next?
Some good news - the constitution is not dead. A
federal judge on 11th
Circuit Court ruled that the above actions were a violation of our first and
fourth amendment rights. Also, the folks at Fort Benning promised not to
play their music. Some bad news: while no longer "wanding" the participants,
the local police surrounded the rally with police and fences and the folks
at Fort Benning kept a helicopter in the air over the Rally almost half the
time. I wonder how many taxpayer dollars were spent for fuel.
A recent commander of WHISC has made much of how the
school's mission is to protect our right to protest, but those freedoms to
Assemble and speak, which are guaranteed by our constitution, in practice
are hindered as much as possible by the local authorities. For those who
engage in civil disobedience (trespassing) the stakes are also higher. Ban
and Bar orders have been replaced by immediate charges. Release the same day
has been replaced with one or two nights in jail after arrest. Every year
many spend three to six months in federal prison for this "crime."
I am reminded of the words of Major Blair who said,
"What message does it send to the world that we lock up elderly nuns while
we fete torturers and assassins? We should be bringing known human rights
abusers who have attended the School of the Americas before a war crimes
tribunal and prosecuting them, just as we have the Bosnian war criminals."
References
*John B. Judis,
The Folly of
Empire, (New York, Scribner, 2004) - especially the first half of the
book is the basis for these sections. I have lifted sentences, quotes etc.
not always attributed. Judis, after Wilson, takes his argument more broadly
leading up to his views of the present administration. I have chosen to
continue to concentrate on Latin America and the SOA.
**Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer,
School of
Assassins, (Maryknoll, NY, Orbis Books, 2001) p. 64. This book along
with the website for the School of the Americas Watch are primary sources
for anyone interested in knowing more -see
www.soaw.org. See especially their article about the most recent
findings, New Research Findings Further Incriminate the Notorious SOA/WHINSEC,
3.23.04.
***Amnesty International "Unmatched
Power, Unmet Principles: The Human Rights Dimensions of US Training of
Foreign Military and Police Forces," 2002.
The author,
David McPhail, is a graduate of Union Theological Seminary and served two
parishes in Texas during the 1960s. He left the ministry in 1970 as (he
says) "one of the lesser losses in the civil rights struggle." He has been
involved in various businesses since then, and for the past 12 years has
been a member of Northminster Presbyterian Church in El Cerrito, CA (a more
light church), where he serves on the Session. His wife, Irene, is a member
of Kehilla Synagogue. They celebrate their 30th anniversary this
year.
David McPhail
242 Trinity Ave.
Kensington, CA 94708
510.525.6286
Irenendavid@yahoo.com
