Newsweek: "Salvador Option" --US Mulls Getting Back in the Death Squad Biz.

Should we train locals to find and capture/kill insurgents? Yes, we should.

Should we have them indiscriminately kill innocent civilians? No, we should not.

 

Using Kurds probably occurs to the military because U.S. Special Forces have been training them for years

 

Here's some background on what the Salvador option looked like when it was really put into effect in El Salvador-

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On the Afternoon of 10 December 1981, units of the Atlacal Rapid Deployment Infantry Battalion (BIRI) arrived in the village of El Mozote, Department of Morazan, after a clash with the guerrillas in the vicinity . . .
Early next morning, 11 December, the soldiers reassembled the entire population in the square. They separated the men from the women and children and locked everyone up in different groups in the church, the convent and various houses.

During the morning, they proceeded to interrogate, torture and execute the men in various locations. Around noon, they began taking the women in groups, separating them from their children and machine-gunning them. Finally, they killed the children. A group of children who had been locked in the convent were machine-gunned through the windows. After exterminating the entire population, the soldiers set fire to the buildings.

UN Truth Commission on El Salvador
The El Mozote Massacre
April 1, 1993


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One [Salvadoran] death squad member, when asked about the types of tortures used, replied: "Uh, well, the same things you did in Vietnam. We learned from you. We learned from you the means, like blowtorches in the armpits, shots in the balls. But for the "toughest ones" — that is, those who resist these other tortures — "we have to pop their eyes out with a spoon. You have to film it to believe it, but boy, they sure sing."

Raymond Bonner
Weakness and Deceit
June, 1984


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On Monday, 24 March 1980, the Archbishop of San Salvador, Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez, was celebrating mass in the Chapel of the Hospital de la Divina Providencia when he was killed by a professional assassin who fired a single .22 or .223 calibre bullet from a red, four-door Volkswagen vehicle. The bullet hit its mark, causing the Archbishop's death from severe bleeding.
Former Major Roberto D'Aubuisson gave the order to assassinate the Archbishop and gave precise instructions to members of his security service, acting as a "death squad", to organize and supervise the assassination.

UN Truth Commission on El Salvador
Death Squad Assassinations: Archbishop Romero
April 1, 1993


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Romero was assassinated in the middle of conducting a mass. At his funeral, in front of the cathedral where his body now lies, army snipers opened fire on a weeping crowd of 100,000, killing 40.

Frontline
El Salvador: Payback
October 12, 2004


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One especially horrid incident from one conflict involved the rape and murder of three US Roman Catholic nuns and a lay worker by National Guard troops in El Salvador in 1980. Last week, the New York Times reported that four Salvadoran troops, serving 30-year prison terms for the crime, have implicated top commanders of the Salvadoran Army as ordering the executions . . .
A New York-based human rights group is demanding the US government investigate the incident again, to determine why a former head of the Salvadoran National Guard, Colonel Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, was allowed to come to the United States and settle in Florida.

Voice of America
New Developments in the Salvadoran Nuns Murder
April 15, 1998


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On the night of November 16, 1989, the unthinkable happened. Twenty six members of the Salvadoran military — nineteen of whom were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas — raided the Jesuit residence at the UCA, pulled Fr. Cortina's six Jesuit brothers and two women co-workers from their beds, and brutally murdered them in front of the rectory.

Seattle University
Jesuit Brother of Slain Martyrs
Builds Local Support for Children
Disappeared during the El Salvador Civil War
February 14, 2001


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The Reagan administration repeatedly insisted that the Salvadoran government and armed forces were not responsible for the violence . . . As President Reagan himself declared in a speech . . . in July 1983, "Much of the violence there - whether from the extreme right or left - is beyond the control of the government." A month later, Abrams (Elliot Abrams, the head of the State Department's human rights bureau) insisted . . . it was "unfair" to blame the military for the violence because "we really don't know who the death squads are."

Raymond Bonner
Weakness and Deceit
June, 1984


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During 1982 and 1983, approximately 8,000 civilians a year were being killed by government forces. Although the figure is less than in 1980 and 1981, targeted executions as well as indiscriminate killings nonetheless remained the policy of the military and internal security forces, part of what Professor William Stanley of the University of New Mexico has described as a "strategy of mass murder" designed to terrorize the civilian population as well as opponents of the government.

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service
El Salvador
February 22, 2000


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Rufina Amaya, 60, is the sole survivor of the [El Mozote] massacre, in which four of her five children and her husband perished. Her fingers fidget as she recalls darting from a line of women who were about to be shot, and creeping into a bush. She stayed immobile for hours, recognizing her children's voices crying ''Mamita, they're killing us!'' as they were bayoneted.
Although she has never received aid of any kind from the government, Rufina says what she really wants is for the perpetrators to ask her forgiveness. After 19 years, she holds little hope it will happen. ''Justice isn't about vengeance, it's a spiritual recognition,'' she says. ''But God is seeing all these things that they deny.''

Business Week International Edition
A Murdered Village Comes Back to Life
March 5, 2001


http://billmon.org/archives/001645.html

 

Snatching high level insurgents in Syria is a lot different than torturing and killing whole villages. Yes to the first, while the second is a choice that doesn't guarantee success (although it did in El Salvador, it didn't in other places like Vietnam). Counterinsurgency operations are messy. That's just the way it is. If you have an enemy embedded in the civilian population - what choice to do you have? One way or another, whether we're in Iraq or not, the insurgency is going to have to be dealt with.

 

Hayes are you condoning U.S. policy in El Salvador in the 1970's and 80's. Do you know what went on there (and in the rest of Central America) in those years?

 

Yes, - I know what went on there. Do you? I doubt it, since US policy shifted several times DRAMATICALLY in the '1970s and 80s.' So there wasn't one consistent 'policy' to support. It should be noted that most of your 'examples' are out of context. El Mozote was the El Salvadoran military, not death squads. Romero was assassinated while CARTER was in office, by the military (not death squads) and US policy at the time was to CUT aid, not increase it when the government cracked down on reformers.

Had I been in charge I would have tried to implement different policies, but I understand why Reagan et al did what they did.

 

Kill bugs dead !!

 

U.S. policy in El Salvador during the 70's and 80's under Carter and Reagan was pretty consistent- support the government against the rebels. There was brief cosmetic divergence from this policy. The death squads, in large part, were the military operating out of uniform, and in any case working in concert with the military in implementing the same policy intended to terrorize the population and quell dissent. I'm glad to hear you would have done things differently. I also understand why this was U.S. policy and it was still inexcusable.

 

Bring back Saddam and the golden age of Iraq.

 

Spend your vacation in beautiful Baghdad, the crown jewel of ancient Persia.

 

I don't think increasing aid with no regard for human rights and decreasing aid because of hr violations is the same thing. Not sure what your point is, however, unless you're saying the article is incorrect at laying the aid at Reagan's feet? Regardless, the point is that much of what happened would have happened anyway - as your examples show (Romero/El Mozote) weren't death squads but uniformed soldiers. As for it being inexcusable, I don't live in a black and white world. I think you can be presented with two bad options, and that there will be undesirable consequences from either choice.

 

I'm definitely down for torture in the 'nuke about to go off in a major city and he knows where it is' scenario. My support wanes heavily after that but I'm not sure what this has to do with snatching high level insurgents. I didn't say I was down with torturing civilians or with a death squad strategy in Iraq, although it might be inevitable.

 

You've made the D&D sluggish and boring. Remeber brevity is the soul of wit. Your point is completely lost in the hundreds upon hundreds of articles you post. I'd like to even give one of your threads a read but I can't because I'm bored to death once I get 5 lines in. Please adjust your technique or you'll end up a BBS joke. Not meant to be mean, just helpful.

 

Hayes, I don't live in a black and white world either. However, I'm pretty comfortable with drawing the line at not providing military, economic, and diplomatic support to nun rapers and kid killers. I know that holding firm on this as a matter of principle marks me as one of the radical fringe left, but I'll just have to live with that.

 

OK, fair enough. So no support, material or otherwise, for regimes that torture and kill their citizens. That means we either remain neutral or openly oppose most of the planet including Russia and China. I don't know if that's tenable.