06/10/06 Troop Atrocities Are Nothing New, And They Must Stop
The Capital Times :: EDITORIAL :: A9
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Mary Ann Litwiller Monona
These kinds of atrocities by U.S. or U.S.-trained troops have been going on for decades.
Just on our side of the globe: Does anyone remember the massacre of the Jesuit priests, the four Maryknoll sisters, Archbishop Romero and 900 people at El Mozote, El Salvador, or the massacres in Guatemala and Nicaragua, the disappearances in Chile and Argentina? The list goes on and on.
The point is that the above barbaric acts were carried out by graduates of the U.S. School of the Americas, a facility for training Central and South American military, at Fort Benning, Ga. In 1996 the Pentagon was forced to release the SOA training manuals that exposed its teaching of torture, extortion and "neutralizing" and, in general, that it was permeated with contempt for law and democracy. That is when it closed for a brief period and then reopened with a new name, Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.
But the savagery goes on, as revealed in Colombia today. That is one military training school. Why would anyone believe that others are different?
As a Christian and a U.S. citizen, I am dismayed when my government is complicit in such wrongdoings, and I cry "Not in my name!" Every November, since 1990, a demonstration at Fort Benning calls for closing WHINSEC for an investigation as to what really goes on there. And every year some demonstrators commit civil disobedience to make their voices heard and are arrested. Right now my husband, Fred Brancel, is serving a sentence in a federal prison, as are 36 others, for revealing something that the U.S. government would rather keep quiet. What a waste of human resources and of taxpayers' money! Revealing a crime is a crime?
At present in Washington, HR 1217, a bill to suspend and study WHINSEC, is being held by Republicans from coming to the floor even though it has 133 co-sponsors. You can help close this school by calling any representative (202-224-3121) and asking her/him to support the amendment to an appropriations bill that would cut funding for WHINSEC. We really need to correct this. Our citizens and our country deserve better.