MY COUNTRY
Reflections on the School of the Americas
by David McPhail
[1-26-05, replacing an earlier version of 3-29-04]
In November of 2004 my wife and I with perhaps 16,000
others from across the country participated in a Vigil protesting the
“School of the Americas” at Fort Benning in Columbus, 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 principal, but from their life situations. When 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
with impunity, “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 understand what is happening now
best 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 our actual foreign policy – what frames the choices we
make – is less determined by how much we know about other countries and
their actions than what are our experiences 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 and
military 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. Perhaps we need to begin by
acknowledging how much easier it is to point out the moral failures of our
ancestors than our own. However, 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 the year Andrew
Jackson was elected 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 defense 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 with all the idealism, optimism and sense of a special
calling to be a light to the world, Manifest Destiny came with a darker side
especially in the 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 can we understand the
bizarre connection of tiny “tribes” and huge gambling casinos in California
other than a vague guilt we know in our bones. Custer’s Last Stand in 1876
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 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 Sloane 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 1848. 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. Lt. Ulysses S. Grant regarded this
war as ”one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker
nation”. The U.S. Army was “sent to provoke a fight, but it was essential
that Mexico should commence it. It was very doubtful whether Congress would
declare war; but if Mexico should attack our troops, the executive could
announce, ‘Whereas, war exists by the act of, etc.,’ and prosecute the
contest with vigor. Once initiated there were but few public men who would
have the courage to oppose it. Experience proves that the man who obstructs
a war in which his nation is engaged, no matter whether right or wrong,
occupies no enviable place in life or history. Better for him, individually,
to advocate ‘war, pestilence, and famine,’ than to act as obstructionist to
a war already begun.” In 1848 the Treaty of Guadalupe was basically signed
at gunpoint. With the stroke of a pen 100,000 Mexican citizens became
American Citizens, though second 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. 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 the world’s largest economic power,
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. 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 we were 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 to export 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, 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 groundwork 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…. 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
PHILLIPPINES*
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. 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 the Spanish were soon 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”; and that while, “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!
We cannot ignore the most naked land grab in Latin America
in the 20th Century when TR took over a portion of Columbia and
created the country of Panama with its U.S. controlled Canal Zone.
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 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 FDR’s Good Neighbor
policy.
FDR – Another Way?
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.
Of course it was FDR who made the famous flip remark when
challenged about Somoza of Nicaragua that, “Yes, he is a son of a bitch, but
he’s our son of a bitch.” Let’s just hope he did not realize just how many
would die because of that son of a bitch! Still throughout most of the 20th
century, sending in the Marines often became necessary to protect American
Companies operating in Latin American countries. Perhaps this is expressed
best by Marine Corps General Smedley Butler who led many of the
interventions in Latin America early in the twentieth Century. Later he
denounced these saying, “I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle
man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a
racketeer, a gangster for capitalism…. Like all members of the military
profession, I never had an original thought until I left the service. My
mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders
of the higher-ups. Thus I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for
American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place
for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped the raping
of a half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall
Street.”****** Or the later statement by the Chairman of Standard Oil, who
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. He also claimed vast holdings of unused land from
United Fruit, compensating them at the value they claimed on their tax
statements! 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 subservient 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 to relate 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 what is the truth of America’s foreign policy actions,
especially 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. Poverty and injustice were
recognized as the “seedbed for communism.” Economic development for more
than just the rich elite was needed. However, in the end the alliance
provided only a slight increase in economic aid but a big increase in guns.
By the 60s, critics of the misuse of foreign aid, had been answered by the
US turning to Loans not Grants. We gave money to help, but this was to be
repaid.
“PRIVATE” LOANS NOT GRANTS
Then in the 1970s there was a new development. Instead of
loaning money, government to government, a 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 Banks 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. At the same time the market for
Texas Tea and Mexican Oil collapsed. Now Mexico and 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 and devalue their currencies
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 is 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 campesino 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. With each new devaluation, as in 1995, the
money sent home to Mexico is more valuable perhaps rivaling the total value
of the tourist industry or of oil though perhaps not of the drug business.
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 by 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 was it 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 and negotiating an end to the U.S. sovereignty in the Canal Zone, 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 plea,
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 cook 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’s
multinationals, 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/WHINSEC 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/WHINSEC and the establishment of 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 NYTimes
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
WHINSEC. 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 Guantanamo and other places in Afghanistan, Iraq and other
secret prisons should be no surprise.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
How can we combat this view of our national self-interest?
Our country’s interests have been identified with 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 churchman 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
first and principle 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 CIA that are calling the shots.
A good first step toward that goal would be to take action
to close the SOA/WHINSEC. 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 telling 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. I urge you to
speak out opposing the school and asking for accountability. Perhaps next
November you might join the protest or sponsor someone to attend the
Vigil/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 of the 11th circuit court ruled in 2004 that many of the
above actions were a violation of our first and fourth amendment rights.
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.”
David McPhail
242 Trinity Ave.
Kensington, CA 94708
510.525.6286
Irenendavid@yahoo.com
NOTES*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 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.
****In 1887 President Grover
Cleveland was present at the General Assembly meeting of the Presbyterian
Church during which denominational executives and missionaries requested
that he enact a federal policy that would prohibit Indians from practicing
their ceremonies, dances, songs, languages, arts and crafts. These policies
were implemented especially in federal boarding schools where students were
punished for speaking their own languages. This I learned from a historical
survey - Mission and Ministries with Native American Peoples, an
addendum to a report for the Presbyterian Church USA General Assembly Task
Force, 1995.
***** An even darker scenario
is painted by John Perkins in his book The Economic Hit Man.
****** At the last minute I
found this quote in a new biography of Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of the
School of the Americas Watch, Disturbing the Peace, by James Hodge
and Linda Cooper, ( Maryknoll, NY, Orbis Books) 2005. See also Lesley Gill,
School of the Americas just published.
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
