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Title: School of the Americas Morphs Into US Training Industrial Complex
Source: [None]
URL Source: http://truth-out.org/news/item/27563-the-new-school-of-the-americas#
Published: Nov 22, 2014
Author: JP Sottile, Truthout
Post Date: 2014-11-22 06:17:50 by Ada
Keywords: None
Views: 11

Commentary on the Honduran coup of late June 2009. The installation is two wooden crosses, a style popularized in the movement to close the SOA (School of the Americans/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). (Photo: DC Protests; Edited: LW / TO) Commentary on the Honduran coup of late June 2009. The installation is two wooden crosses, a style popularized in the movement to close the SOA (School of the Americans/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). (Photo: DC Protests; Edited: LW / TO)

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In a long, 200-year history of US interventionism, covert action and troubling support for repressive regimes, the story of the US Army School of the Americas (SOA) at Ft. Benning, Georgia, stands out as a grotesque example of militarism run amok.

Since its inception in 1946, the SOA - or as critics often referred to it, "the School of Assassins" - has epitomized America's peculiar brand of "outsourced imperialism." The list of leaders dispatched by the SOA, the catalogue of criminal indictments and the not-insignificant death tolls tallied in SOA-linked civil wars and so-called "counter-insurgencies" is, for lack of a better word, impressive.

For the last 25 years, the school's critics - ranging from religious activists to members of Congress to indigenous rights' leaders - have regarded its programs, and the infamous training manuals made public in 1996, as uniquely responsible for the terrible consequences - unintended or otherwise - of America's long-standing policy of arming, training and dispatching generations of military leaders around Central and South America.

Simply put, the School of the Americas exemplifies everything wrong with US foreign policy after World War II. All too often, that policy favored vested interests in client states, assisted corporations coveting resources in so- called Banana Republics or simply allowed knee-jerk, anticommunism to trump the rights and democratic choices of those who invariably ended up on the receiving end of SOA training in places like Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile and Colombia.

According to a Congressional Research Service report from 2001, between 1946 (when the first iteration of the school was established in the Panama Canal Zone) and 2001 (when the Ft. Benning version was officially "closed"), the US Military instructed "over 60,000 officers, cadets, and noncommissioned officers from both Latin America and the United States."

Instead of training a hemispheric cohort of anticommunist armies and paramilitaries, the US increasingly trains a growing network of "counterterrorism" forces, drug warriors and security forces in pro-US regimes around the world With at least 1,000 "students" per year attending the School to learn the latest in counter-insurgency techniques, psychological warfare and US military doctrine, the SOA transformed two generations of Latin American soldiers into anticommunist "shock troops" manning the front lines of US "national interests" around Latin America. This growing cohort of graduates effectively became Washington's outsourced army deployed throughout the Western Hemisphere.

But it was the Cold War. That was then. And this is now.

Now the Cold War has given way to wars on both drugs and terror. Now the School of the Americas has been rebranded as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). And now the United States has shifted away from the centralized models of the Cold War and the SOA by, in essence, opening up a vast satellite campus system of military training and client state development around the world.

Instead of training a hemispheric cohort of anticommunist armies and paramilitaries, the US increasingly trains a growing network of "counterterrorism" forces, drug warriors and security forces in pro-US regimes around the world: from the Philippines to the Horn of Africa, across the continent to West Africa and, of course, back in Central America. Ironically, troops on "training missions" have been rotating out of Ft. Benning to train forces inside Honduras - one of the deadliest nations on earth.

Although students still come to Ft. Benning in notable numbers - with 389 students from 19 countries attending WHINSEC during the first week of November 2014 - this "new" model of training relies on a heavy dose of "in country" training of local military and security forces. Not coincidentally, this takes the spotlight off of Ft. Benning's high-profile past and the political implications of fostering counter-insurgent forces deep in the heart of Dixie. As far as officials are concerned, the SOA was DOA over a decade ago. Now, insurgents are rebranded as "terrorists," drug traffickers and criminal gangs are rebranded as "narco-terrorists" and the catch-phrase du jour is "democracy building."

The Cold War has been slowly but surely cajoled and rebranded by an entrenched, seemingly-perpetual National Security State that relies on "pivoting" to new missions with new jargon whenever the current mission becomes untenable or, in the case of the School of the Americas, as the atrocities pile up. This full re-boot of the School of the Americas' model deploys troops globally on "training" missions and, increasingly, US Special Forces work in concert with the post-Clinton State Department and its Conflict Bureau to establish forward operating bases in a new system of pro-US client states under the rubric of the War on Terror, and, if approved, it will be partially paid for by President Obama's recently-proposed Counterterrorism Partnership Fund (CTPF).

The administration requested $4 billion for the CTPF in FY2015, which includes "Direct Partner Support," including "near-term training, equipping, advising, operational support, and long-term, capacity-building efforts in coordination with the Department of State." The CTPF notwithstanding, the State Department's budget for this type of "outreach" has grown every year since 9/11.

It is not that policymakers want to shut down training inside the United States. Students will still attend WHINSEC, SOCOM (US Special Operations Command's Joint Special Operations) University and a vast, mostly-overlooked network of training facilities around the United States. In fact, one of the rationales given for preserving the SOA when Congress considered pulling support in 2001 was a sort of "democracy-building through osmosis" as students from around the world were guided by "exposure" to the glowing light of American democracy simply by spending some time at Ft. Benning.

Col. Montano was just one of many of his countrymen to cycle through the SOA system and then return home to engage in systematic crimes against humanity. Rather, this shift to a broader overseas training and "cooperation" presence represents a telling "win-win" for the National Security State. It allows US Special Forces and military personnel unique access through the pass-key of "cooperation" and "crisis response activities" under the rubric of State Department diplomacy, and it minimizes the exposure and public scrutiny that made the School of the Americas so infamous that it finally had to be officially ended in name, if not in deed.

Ultimately, it illustrates how deftly the Cold War has been slowly but surely cajoled and rebranded by an entrenched, seemingly-perpetual National Security State that relies on "pivoting" to new missions with new jargon whenever the current mission becomes untenable or, in the case of the School of the Americas, as the atrocities pile up.

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