CITIZEN ALERT v1.159
SOAW
Freelance reporter Willy E. Gutman conducts an interview with Honduran Lt. Col. Roberto Nuñez a graduate of The School of the Americas:
Q: Who were your instructors?
A: Officer-level classes were taught by Latin American SOA graduates.
Q: Did the school offer courses on human rights?
A: I don't remember.
Q: Did some SOA graduates commit acts of barbarism?
A: Warring sides give different labels to the tactical components of a military operation.
Q: Military operation?
A: Yes. We were at war.
Q: Against your own people. Civilians. You were not defending against foreign invasion.
A: Civilians subverted by outside influences can destroy a nation.
Q: Old men, women, children?
A: All part of a fifth column.
Q: Are you calling clergy, teachers, students, journalists, peasants and trade unionists a "fifth column," thus justifying-
A: Yes. Communists. They threatened the public order and national security. Ours was a war fueled by outside ideological forces intent on subverting the whole region and-
Q: - justifying the murder of priests and labor organizers because their vision of hope for the poor clashed with the interests of the plutocracy? Some were executed face down in the mud.
A: So what?
Q: - rationalizing the rape and slaughter of nuns who taught children how to read and write? Justifying the "disappearance" of thousands of civilians? Validating the massacre of 900 peasants in El Mozote, and gunning down an archbishop and six Jesuit priests who championed the powerless against the powerful?
A: I don't care if they were the pope. War makes titles, status or celebrity quite irrelevant. They were communists. All the damned lot. They had to be neutralized.
Q: - or throwing people out of helicopters several thousand feet above ground? Or using private houses as detention and torture chambers?
A: Yes, yes, yes. Madness! No one pretends that war is pretty. There was no other way. The main moral question is, what was the right thing to do under the circumstance, not who did it, or how. Many praiseworthy policies are promoted for morally dubious reasons, and many pernicious policies are advanced with the best of intentions.
Q: Good intentions and an unshakable conviction in the morality of a cause do not make such a cause moral, do they?
A: Philosophers must decide, not soldiers. Ultimately, we must ask to what extent the military actions of a debtor nation are driven by the policies and objectives of its creditor.
Q: A nation that depends on the U.S. for survival can never be free - is that what you're saying?
A: It's one way of putting it.
Q: Is there democracy in Central America today?
A: No. What we have are amorphous societies run by improvisation, governments that have no national conscience, no doctrine, no vision, no plan. They have lost sight of the priorities. When everything is important, nothing gets done.
Q: Who were your instructors?
A: Officer-level classes were taught by Latin American SOA graduates.
Q: Did the school offer courses on human rights?
A: I don't remember.
Q: Did some SOA graduates commit acts of barbarism?
A: Warring sides give different labels to the tactical components of a military operation.
Q: Military operation?
A: Yes. We were at war.
Q: Against your own people. Civilians. You were not defending against foreign invasion.
A: Civilians subverted by outside influences can destroy a nation.
Q: Old men, women, children?
A: All part of a fifth column.
Q: Are you calling clergy, teachers, students, journalists, peasants and trade unionists a "fifth column," thus justifying-
A: Yes. Communists. They threatened the public order and national security. Ours was a war fueled by outside ideological forces intent on subverting the whole region and-
Q: - justifying the murder of priests and labor organizers because their vision of hope for the poor clashed with the interests of the plutocracy? Some were executed face down in the mud.
A: So what?
Q: - rationalizing the rape and slaughter of nuns who taught children how to read and write? Justifying the "disappearance" of thousands of civilians? Validating the massacre of 900 peasants in El Mozote, and gunning down an archbishop and six Jesuit priests who championed the powerless against the powerful?
A: I don't care if they were the pope. War makes titles, status or celebrity quite irrelevant. They were communists. All the damned lot. They had to be neutralized.
Q: - or throwing people out of helicopters several thousand feet above ground? Or using private houses as detention and torture chambers?
A: Yes, yes, yes. Madness! No one pretends that war is pretty. There was no other way. The main moral question is, what was the right thing to do under the circumstance, not who did it, or how. Many praiseworthy policies are promoted for morally dubious reasons, and many pernicious policies are advanced with the best of intentions.
Q: Good intentions and an unshakable conviction in the morality of a cause do not make such a cause moral, do they?
A: Philosophers must decide, not soldiers. Ultimately, we must ask to what extent the military actions of a debtor nation are driven by the policies and objectives of its creditor.
Q: A nation that depends on the U.S. for survival can never be free - is that what you're saying?
A: It's one way of putting it.
Q: Is there democracy in Central America today?
A: No. What we have are amorphous societies run by improvisation, governments that have no national conscience, no doctrine, no vision, no plan. They have lost sight of the priorities. When everything is important, nothing gets done.
posted by Bobot Adrenaline at 10:26 AM
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