The Salvadoran Option

international | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis

Wednesday January 12, 2005 10:34

by righteous pragmatist

How it will work in iraq

Take an anonymous Pentagon leak from a “high level military officer,” add an appalling lack of knowledge of history, and compound it with ignorance of special warfare tactics. This process describes the article published by Newsweek breathlessly revealing that a “desperate” Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is “considering” employing the “Salvadoran option” to thwart the “growing quagmire” of the Iraq War.

This terrible option, reports Newsweek, was used effectively in the counter-guerrilla wars in El Salvador in the early 1980s. It involves U.S. special operations forces leading indigenous “death squads” to root out and kill or capture enemy military and political leaders. In a backs-against-the-wall-with-all-guns-blazing reporting style, the article suggests that, once exercised, this method might win the war but implies that the cost in innocent life could be horrific.

This is utter nonsense.

Let’s look at history first. Just what was going on in the early 1980s? The Soviet Union was strong and expanding. Under President Jimmy Carter, the Russians invaded Afghanistan. Carter punished them by canceling the 1980 Olympic Games, the one peaceful event that united all nations every four years. Carter then adroitly destabilized two areas in the world – Iran and Nicaragua – and almost toppled another friend, South Korea. The benefits of his policy in the Persian Gulf began with the hostage crisis and persist with the growing Islamist movement threatening us today. In Central America, the communist Sandinistas, led by the Ortega brothers, stepped into the void created by the toppling of the Somoza regime. They immediately launched and accelerated support for Cuban-inspired communist insurgencies in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Costa Rica. The Soviets installed a dictator puppet in Grenada and began to construct airfields to accept high performance military aircraft. The Ortegas discussed acquisition of MiG fighter aircraft. El Salvador was run by an increasingly harsh military dictatorship. Multiple, compounded, failed foreign policy initiatives helped the nation dump Carter in 1980.

After Ronald Reagan defeated Carter, he announced a new, aggressive policy in the region: we would assist these nations resist the incursion of communism and help them achieve democratic status. Such idealism was denigrated by the usual suspects (the Left and the media, but then I repeat myself) as being hypocritical. “How can you support brutal dictators by pretending to export democracy?” they asked. “Since these people have no history of democracy, how can you reasonably expect them to understand it?” Reagan knew that oppressed peoples everywhere yearn to breathe free. He also realized that the U.S. could more effectively influence stable, secure countries than those in which communism had triumphed and the democratic opposition was eliminated, a sad condition that accompanies every communist takeover. So the Reagan administration drew the line in the sand at El Salvador. We began to increase military assistance and training, along with economic development and diplomatic initiatives to encourage a transition to democracy.

It was slow going at first. Recall that America still smarted from the Vietnam experience that had ended only a few years earlier, in April 1975. Congress was virulently anti-military and opposed any use of power that might result in “another Vietnam,” a fear that had achieved mythic dimensions in the minds of liberals and persists today. As a consequence, American military efforts in the region were micromanaged with healthy doses of antipathy and suspicion. Due to an innocent remark by LTG Ernie Graves during Congressional testimony, U.S. military presence was limited to a scant 56 officers and enlisted men. Funding to train and equip Salvadoran military was pathetically small compared to the danger of expanding communism at the American doorstep. Every penny of the monies available was carefully weighed by U.S. and Salvadoran planners to make certain that limited funds were spread as efficiently as possible. The American side pushed training as a necessity, including a large dose of training that focused on human rights, dealing with civilians, and prisoner handling. Despite contrary accusations by a hostile media, the quality of the training was designed to improve Salvadoran Army relations with its populace and win them over from the guerrillas. The strategy eventually proved remarkably successful, but at first the concept was tough to sell.

In El Salvador, a popular culture of violence compounded the severe problems that would be associated with any insurgency. Salvadoran soldiers and guerrillas alike thought that the best fate for an enemy was death, and if any innocents got in the way: tough. As a result, the peasant population was terrorized by both sides. One of the institutions that drew the most criticism – justified in my opinion – were the death squads sent out by the Salvadoran Army. These notorious ad hoc units dressed in civilian clothes and kidnapped, killed, and assassinated all those whom they even suspected of supporting the guerrillas. On the other side, the FMLN guerrillas also killed and kidnapped with impunity.

Poor Salvadoran peasants were caught in the crossfire. American outrage with the death squads grew to the point that Vice President George H.W. Bush flew secretly to San Salvador to meet with General Flores-Lima and others in the junta. Behind closed doors, Bush told them that President Reagan was sickened by the death squads and would not tolerate their continued operation. “Stop them now, and guarantee this to me before I walk out of that door,” Bush was reported to have said, “or we will cease all support for El Salvador immediately!” When Flores-Lima protested that Salvador was an anti-communist bulwark, Bush dismissed his plea out of hand. America decided to draw the line here: America will not support the death squads, period. Bush was hard and inflexible, and the Salvadorans agreed to his terms. The death squads were out of business permanently.

Further convincing the leaders that positive inducements (and not fear) were best for the country, the Salvadoran government benefited from a surprising upsurge of popular support when the peasants realized that the military was now on their side. Conversely, the level of violence from the guerrillas spiked as the communists, desperately aware that they were losing control, tried to intimidate the people. Within months political parties formed, candidates campaigned, and genuinely free elections were held under the stern gaze of international electoral monitors, who pronounced the elections fair. Voter turnout was amazing. Key to this success was the fact that the army – now increasingly well trained and staunchly on the side of the people - announced that it would not influence the election but would devote all assets toward safeguarding the electoral process.

Salvadoran Army units surrounded polling places, guns pointed outward, protecting the peasants as they lined up to vote. Vowing to disrupt the election, guerrillas attacked indiscriminately with small arms fire, machine guns, and mortars. Innocent civilians – men, women, and children – lay in the baking sun, face down in the dirt while guerrillas tried to intimidate and frighten them away from the polling places. Army protection was effective, and the communist attacks failed miserably. The motivation of these people – poor, uneducated, and unsophisticated in the mechanisms of democracy but acutely aware of their golden chance for freedom – could not be suppressed by mere gunfire. It was an honest, unassuming display of bravery that awed combat veterans.

Democracy won the day in El Salvador, not Noam Chomsky’s urban legend of Special Forces-led death squads. In El Salvador, we saw a model that works worldwide: Give ordinary people a chance to be free, to chose representative leaders, and to control their own destiny, and they will gladly step up to the challenge, regardless of personal danger or discomfort. It worked in South Korea, El Salvador, and much of Central America. It worked in Grenada and Panama, in the liberated states of Eastern Europe, in Afghanistan, and most recently in Ukraine. And the model will work in short time in Iraq. Democracy is the real Salvadoran Option. It is a gift that we must steadfastly promote, defend, and share with the world.

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Comments (16 of 16)

Slackjaw

by Ali H.

Wed Jan 12, 2005 11:38

For a start Carter didn't "CANCEL"the 1980 Moscow games which went ahead without the participation of some US bootlicks. Even the Brits with their "special relationship" attended.

From that statement on your "article" degenerates rapidly into farce.

Ironically the issue at stake in the 1980 games was the invasion of Afghanistan. At least the Soviets had been "requested" to do so by the Afghan government, whereas the US and their gimps brazened it out without even that fig-leaf to hide behind!

Go back to wherever it is you came from and learn the facts before opening your gob again!

The School of the Americas...

by vomit

Wed Jan 12, 2005 13:16

trained a generation of US and South American officers in torture, psy-ops and NAZI-ism.

Killing the Archibishop of El Salvador was not a blow for liberty against the Left or the Media.
It was just proof of a cancer that had been allowed to spread and infect, a cancer that needs to be removed, therepeutically to the benefit of all mankind.

This was done for many reasons, through many presidencies of the USA many chairmanships of the USSR many wars on Israel, to protect monsters who had taken up residence in the Americas, in the foolish belief of their dogmas of racial purity, to guarantee the supply of cocaine with which both managerial classes and laterly ghettoised poor could be controlled and to perpetuate the creeds of hate, chaos and their eternal partners war and terror.

Now if we have to take you through it step by step we will.
That was the XX century.
The century of darkness and war. It is now MMV. The weather appears to be broken. The "animals" seem to have a sixth sense and survive these things, but we all got the *same* genes in our veins and no-one is immune to HIV/AIDS / SARS / FLU / TB. And we mostly don't seem to use that sixth sense.

Are we to be governed through corporations, by the mediocre who have never read good books, but believed they were clever enough to deserve a desk, a job, some poorly bred kids and enough food to eat whilst their fellows of the genepool lived in near slavery oppression silence and shit and never saw their children born or grow?

To be or not To be.

Not the 1970s and 1980s Central America I remember

by Death Squad Fancier Watch

Wed Jan 12, 2005 14:08

This 'article' from this 'righteous pragmatist' has only one redeeming feature - it lets the rest of the world know where he or she is coming from. Obviously this person has no problem with extra-judicial murder, so if he or she would be so kind as to print their address on this site, I could call around and do a 'job' on them. Btw, what does 'righteous pragmatist' think about extra-judicial murders in Ireland? Or is it OK only when it's the US govt. or their minions that are doing the murdering?

It's obvious what my point is.

Wed Jan 12, 2005 17:34

Extra-judicial murder should never be considered as Option A.
The US Government would prefer that the Iraqi government which emerges from the turmoil in that country would be democratic and use the rule of law - conventional military tactics to eliminated terrorists- with out the need to use death squads killing vast numbers of people where intelligence and more efficent planning can have a better effect without alienating the common people.
However if such a right wing dictatorships did emerge the US would have to work with it on two levels- encourage it to adopt democracy while at the same time supply it with the intelligence to eliminated terrorist enemies of the US. The US trained many of the officers and cadre which formed the Latin American armies in order to defeat communism but they never trained nor authorised them to use torture murder and genocide of innocent people which hampered rather than affected that goal. The most effective policy was to tackle the communist terrorists themselves head on.

That is exactly what happened in Latin America under the Reagan administration and it was the policy that worked in the end - the only dictatorships which remain in Latin America are Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.

The US supplied intelligence to Saddam in oder for his military to halt the soviet funded Iranian revolution but never did they approve of Saddam's slaughter of millions of innocent men women and children with chemical weapons intended for the battlefield.

The policy which is now working in Iraq- democratic politics- is replacing the barbarism of Saddam and the Baathist party now that Soviet influence in Iran has untied our hands - in order to combat the insidious spectre of Islamic terrorism.
Just as Left wing terror increased in El Salvador before the population voted for democratic government so the Islamic terrorists will increase their terror campaign's intensity before the poll on January 20.
They will not win and the nations of the world including those countries which opposed the invasion of Iraq will have to admit the wisdom of defeating and removing Saddam in 2003.

elected.

by jsr

Wed Jan 12, 2005 19:54

Hugo Chavez was elected. He holds the popular vote. he is not a Dictator.

re. chavez elected

by bayofpigs

Wed Jan 12, 2005 21:08

the word is repeatedly - a referendum designed to oust him failed in the recent past.

What do cuba and venezuala have in common that has rp repeating republican talking points about them? Neither will lick the boots of his master mr bush.

death squads as option B

by Gearoid

Thu Jan 13, 2005 14:15

So R P thinks that death squads shouldn't be considered as option A. Does it really matter to the people of El Salvador, Guatemala or Colombia at the moment whether the death squads were option A or B. The point is they were used and are still used.

I fail to see the benefit of this type of gruel on indymedia.

RP: Salvador counterinsurgency as explained by U.S. Army lieutenant colonels

by redjade

Thu Jan 13, 2005 14:28

Repeating Errors of History
By Jason Vest
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/20962

...a 1989 report, titled "American Military Policy in Small Wars: The Case of El Salvador," by the conservative quartet of Andrew Bacevich, James Hallums, Richard White and Thomas Young, all of whom were U.S. Army lieutenant colonels at the time.

[....]

In El Salvador, the officers found, U.S. aid in the name of counterinsurgency had produced two results. The first was the creation of a better equipped and slightly better trained Salvadoran army that, in taking the fight to the FMLN, merely encouraged the rebels to disband into smaller units – units that the Salvadoran army refused to engage, opting instead for "search and avoid patrols," as one U.S. officer derisively put it. The second outcome was the strengthening of a corrupt and repressive oligarchy, financed by billions of dollars justified by wishing-will-make-it-so rhetoric about reforming El Salvador's government. Only too aware of the American obsession with not losing a country to communism, the government felt free to flout U.S. demands for progressive change and let its paramilitary terrorists run rampant. "The failure to revitalize the government," the officers wrote, "further accounts for the existing stalemate and poor prognosis for the future."

With nothing to lose, the Salvadoran military and its proxies pursued a campaign of "lavish brutality, fail[ing] to distinguish between dissenters and revolutionaries," killing tens of thousands of citizens (many of whom had nothing to do with the FMLN), all of which added up to a "U.S. policy built on a foundation of corpses." So concluded Benjamin Schwartz, the RAND Corporation analyst tasked with assessing El Salvador policy for the Department of Defense, in December 1998's Atlantic Monthly.

How can Bush have a Counterinsurgency when the US Mil doesn't know who the enemy is?

Thu Jan 13, 2005 14:37

BATTLE LESSONS
What the generals don’t know.
by DAN BAUM
http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/050117fa_fact

In Iraq, the Army’s marquee high-tech weapons are often sidelined while the enemy kills and maims Americans with bombs wired to garage-door openers or doorbells. Even more important, the Army is facing an enemy whose motivation it doesn’t understand. “I don’t think there’s one single person in the Army or the intelligence community that can break down the demographics of the enemy we’re facing,” an Airborne captain named Daniel Morgan told me. “You can’t tell whether you’re dealing with a former Baathist, a common criminal, a foreign terrorist, or devout believers.”

Shameless lies

by Dan

Thu Jan 13, 2005 14:59

Robert White, the former US ambassador to El Salvador, testified before Congress in the early 80s that all the killing of civilians was being done by government forces and their allies, that the US government knew all about this and approved of it, that it couldn't happen without military aid from the Pentagon. The Truth Commission set up after the civil war reached the same conclusion. Far from disapproving of the violence, the Reagan administration planned the entire campaign, down to the last detail. When 4 American nuns were raped and shot by the army, Jeane Kirkpatrick said she believed they were helping the FMLN - in other words, they got what they deserved.

Save this mendacious drivel for some website where people know nothing about history and will swallow your lies.

Still haven't answered my questions

Thu Jan 13, 2005 17:59

I asked this 'righteous pragmatist' (really should be 'wrongeous hegemony arselicker') two questions, and in response he or she just repeated the sewage he/she had previously posted. We are still waiting...

Righteous Pragmatist is blood-thirsty delusional idiot and other observations.

by Dave - Global Action UCD (pers cap)

Thu Jan 13, 2005 20:57

I’m not going to waste much time on RP’s trash, cos he’s been exposed a million times before as a nutcase. But here are a few things:

The US trained latin American armies not to combat “communism” but to prevent any left-wing or popular movement that would threaten US interests. This included many democratic governments and reformist movements that sought to redistribute wealth and follow an independent economic development path.

The US DID train Latin American armies to torture people, and they DID support genocide -such as in Guatemala.

And most of the people they were fighting were not “communist terrorists” -they were a wide variety of groups, ranging from communists to liberal reformers to catholic priests, as well as peasants, teachers and students.

Your contention that it was the US that brought democracy to central america is the most hilarious and delusional claim I’ve ever heard -the US supported an array of mass-murdering psychopaths, from Somoza to the Guatemalan generals to the Contras. When democratic transition occurred it was DESPITE US foreign policy, not because of it.

And as for your claim that Hugo Chavez is a dictator, well… everyone here knows that’s a load of bollocks.

Oh and the US also supported “Saddam's slaughter of millions of innocent men women and children with chemical weapons intended for the battlefield” (teeny bit of an exaggeration there)-they knew about it, their intelligence agencies told them what he was doing and they went ahead anyway.

It wasn’t “left-wing terror” that was the problem in El Salvador -the guerrillas accounted for a tiny proportion of the killings in that country, according to Human rights groups, while US-backed death squads and state terrorists killed about 75,000 people. Your claim is taken straight from Dick Cheney’s vice-presidential debate, and shows how gullible you are.

And the icing on the cake of your complete pseudo-fascist reactionary rant is your description of what’s happening in Iraq right now -repression, destruction of entire towns, torture- as “democratic politics”. It shows just what an utter loony you are.

The Devil and George Warmonger Bush

by The Devil and George Warmonger Bush - The Black House Bullies

Fri Jan 14, 2005 08:06

666 The Tenth Level of Hell Suite 666

666-666-Hell Ext. 666

His Unholiness George Warmonger Bush to the Iraqis: "Well Shit! It looks like One of Sistani's Aides had a little accident. Look's like we'll have to keep the Peace and prevent more Sectarian Violence. Slipped on a Bar of Soap. Sorry to Oil the 'Salvador Option' but Oil comes first."

4 nuns raped & mudered

by Larry

Sat Feb 26, 2005 20:34

Correct me if I am wrong but the 4 nuns in question & another archbishop were murdered in 1980. Regan wasn't president until 1981. How did he plan that down to the last detail?

Robert White Ambassador to El Salvador 1980

Sat Feb 26, 2005 20:45

Also notice that Robert White, quoted to great effect above, was the ambassador to El Salvador in 1980 for the Carter administration.

Chavez the Democrat

by Hugo

Sun Feb 27, 2005 02:42

Will someone draw a diagram of an arse and an elbow for Righteous Pragmatist cos someone needs to show him his arse from his elbow if he describes Hugo Chavez as a dictator.

Regardless of whether you support him or not, he is probable th emost democratically elected leader in the entire Americas. GW Bush or none of his allies have a democratic mandate like Chavez.

If the US supported democracy they woul dbe supporting Chavez rather than supporting coups and assassination plots against him.

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The Salvadoran Option

Comments (16 of 16)