Thought Experiment

While the majority of Americans are against the war in Iraq, that's not the case with the war in Afghanistan. Many on the Left believe in the justifications for our bombardment of the people of Afghanistan. The predominant view it seems is that Afghanistan was harboring terrorists and terrorist training camps that were preparing attacks on us. Therefore we must attack them to keep the danger from reaching our shores. That's a good approximation of the prevailing view. If you agree with that view or something close to that, I'd like you to consider the case of many Latin American countries.

The US Army School of Americas (SOA), based in Fort Benning, Georgia, trains Latin American security personnel in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics. SOA graduates are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. In 1996 the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Among the SOA's nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Lower-level SOA graduates have participated in human rights abuses that include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the El Mozote Massacre of 900 civilians. (See Grads in the News).

That is 60,000 U.S. trained terrorists. These people are trained to oppress popular movements. Does anyone believe for a second that Al Qaida has trained 60,000 terrorists for a war against the United States? And yet we've waged a proxy war against the people of Latin America for over fifty years. Invasion, occupation, intervention, military coups, funding of opposition parties to the tunes of millions to fix elections, all for the purpose of keeping Latin America our little sweatshop.

Does Nicaragua have the right to set off bombs in Washington? Do they have the right to arrest George Bush and his cast of characters that were largely in power when the terrorist war was waged against Nicaragua? Do the people of Latin American have the right to bomb us in retaliation of our terrorism against them?

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