No one is in favor of terrorism - and the United States has always claimed to take a strong stance against it. But maybe not as much as one would like to think. The U.S. government currently funds the controversial School of the Americas. SOA has trained its students in a wide variety of basic military skills - along with a number of questionable activities, including torture, blackmail and kidnapping.
SOA was first established in 1946 in Panama to aid in the training of Latin American and Caribbean militaries. In 1963, President Kennedy moved the institute to Fort Benning, Ga., and refocused its goals to fit with the Cold War. More than 50,000 people have graduated from SOA since its founding.
The institute's alumni list includes many notorious dictators. Other graduates have been responsible for some of the most heinous acts of terrorism in the last half-century. The Mozete Massacre in El Salvador, which claimed the lives of more than 900 civilians, was perpetrated by SOA graduates. Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated by an SOA trained operative. A United Nations worker in Chile was murdered by another SOA graduate. Hundreds upon hundreds of human rights abuses have been committed in foreign countries by perpetrators using techniques and skills learned here in the United States.
The full magnitude of SOA's abuses were not revealed until 1996 when, under intense pressure, the Pentagon released a number of the school's training manuals. "Terrorism and the Urban Guerrilla," "Interrogation" and "Counter Intelligence" are just a few of the many manuals used to instruct students.
The School is clearly promoting the violation of human rights and oppression in foreign countries. Not surprisingly, a strong protest movement has grown in recent years demanding the end of SOA. Sixty Ann Arbor residents will be traveling to Fort Benning this month to protest SOA. Their activism is needed - in 1998, Congress voted to cut funding to the institute but the vote was defeated 212-201.
As important as protecting the national interests of the nation may be, SOA simply goes too far. One of the United States's major Cold War goals was to spread democracy throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. The SOA has done nothing to achieve this goal, and has only damaged the area by providing training for future terrorists. Educating our neighbors so that they can better defend themselves and the ideals of democracy is one thing; showing them how to properly torture and interrogate innocent civilians is another. It is disgraceful that tax dollars are funding such a school.
Through its sponsorship of the SOA, the government has turned its back on its alleged aspirations: peace, freedom, democracy. How can other nations view our form of democracy as being superior to the fascist governments of other nations if we encourage the same abuses that they do?
The SOA should be closed down immediately. In its place, the United States. should sponsor a school that instructs its students in human rights and how to protect them. Only then can the government hope to atone for inadvertently funding the murder, rape and torture of thousands of innocent people.
11-22-99
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