counterpunch.org
Taking on the School of the Americas
Graduates from Ft. Benning partook in Latin America's most corrupt regimes, yet Congress still funds the school
by Rev. Charles Booker-Hirsch
Since the tragedy of 9/11, we have learned some
of the ways Osama bin Laden has schooled his al-Qaida organization
into a formidable terrorist organization. No major media organization
I know of, however, dares today to discuss how for more than
five decades - the last two decades on our own soil - our own
government systematically has been operating a more substantial
terrorist school.
Established in Panama in 1946 as a hemispheric
Cold War beachhead, the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA),
which operates solely for the training of Latin American military
officers, was moved to Ft. Benning in Columbus, GA in 1984. Over
60,000 have graduated. They include Panamanian strongman Manuel
Noriega and Bolivian dictator Hugo Banzer; the assassins of an
archbishop, a bishop, six Jesuit priests and four American churchwomen;
and countless other military strongmen responsible for the deaths
of literally hundreds of thousands.
From 1989-93, I worked with and heard
the graphic persecution stories of untold numbers of Central
American refugees fleeing de facto military dictatorships. It
was no coincidence that the majority of SOA graduates in those
years hailed from the Central American countries of Guatemala
and El Salvador. Today, the majority of trainees are imported
from Colombia, where we have pumped over $2 million of military
aid daily the last two years into a "war on drugs"
smokescreen for business interests that has only served to inflame
the 40-year civil war there. Just two weeks ago, a narrow House
majority freed this "drug eradication" money to openly
engage in counterinsurgency operations. Vietnam, anyone?
In 1996 the Pentagon was forced to release
training manuals used at the school that advocated the use of
torture, extortion and execution, according to The School of
the America's Watch, a watchdog organization. Even after these
were made public, Defense officials continued to point out that
most of the school's graduates had not committed the scores of
human rights abuses against the millions of refugees fleeing
the wrath that's come. This may be true. At the same time, for
the last 55 years most of the Latin American military officers
who actually ordered these abuses learned their lessons well
through our taxpayer-supported SOA.
After the House of Representatives decisively
voted to shut down the school in 1999, a House-Senate conference
committee voted 8-7 to keep it open, provided the school be renamed
- get this - the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation
(WHISC). Even SOA proponents saw no difference in the much-touted
renaming.
Georgia's late Sen. Paul Coverdell assured
his constituents the name switch was "a cosmetic change,"
and the Columbus, Ga. Ledger-Inquirer strongly concurred in a
recent editorial. Different name - same shame. Orwellian Doublespeak,
anyone?
Please join me and numerous communions
such as the Presbyterian Church in urging leaders such as our
distinguished Sen. Carl Levin, Chair of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, to close SOA/WHISC and discontinue "Plan Colombia."
The irony again is that, in the midst of our current war on terrorism
to parts East, we train and unleash scores of future terrorists
yearly to parts South. Hypocrisy, anyone?
Rev. Charles Booker-Hirsch is pastor of Northside Presbyterian Church in
Ann Arbor. He was one of 43 indicted in April for trespassing
onto Ft. Benning during what he describes as a solemn nonviolent
civil disobedience action last November. The "SOA 43"
trial date has been set for July 8 at the U.S. District Court
in Columbus, GA. |
