Bearing Witness at Fort Benning
Outside the gates into Fort Benning, GA this morning (Sunday, November 20) there are 15,000 plus demonstrators. Each is holding a small cross or other religious symbol bearing the name of a man, a woman, or a child killed in Latin America by a graduate of the US Army’s School of the Americas at Fort Benning. Each name will be read aloud during a solemn procession. It is a moving and powerful event. During the day, some demonstrators will commit civil disobedience. The likely outcome is not a “photo opportunity” arrest but rather a six month or one year term in a federal penitentiary.
The Vigil to close the School of Americas was started in 1990 by Father Roy Bourgeois and a handful of allies. It is a more relevant struggle today than ever because of the current national “debate” over torture and because of the role of SOA graduates in the ongoing vicious and violent effort to crush the rights of workers to organize in Columbia.
I am unable to be there in person this year, but I can bring this struggle to the attention of TPMCafe readers.
Among other things, the Vigil stands as witness against the sordid history of torture in the US. From Indian massacres, to lynchings, to El Salvador, to My Lai, the nation has been down this road before. Lyndie Englund was not a pioneer.
The following is from the SOA Watch website where much more information is available:
“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.
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Why is the commission of civil disobedience so important to this vigil?
November 20, 2005 9:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
We've been in the supporting torture business way before "5 deferment Dick" Cheney. See the movie Romero about what happened in El Salvador in the time leading up to the Archbishop's assassination in San Salvador
November 20, 2005 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good question. I'm not sure of the numbers but over the years of this struggle scores of people, maybe more, have done serious time as a result of their commitment on this issue. Most but not all who have taken that step have been priests or nuns. Indeed the impetus for SOA watch came initially from the profound effect on Fr. Bourgeois and as a result of their personal connections to clerics like the assasinated Father Oscar Romero and the nuns raped and murded in El Savador. These crimes and more were ordered and/or carried out by those trained by the US army at Fort Benning under the SOA program.
Civil disobedience, I think, always is a combination of expressing the depth of feeling of those who commit it and calculations as to its strategic and tactical effectiveness. I do think the struggle against SOA has had significant impact within the military and in Congress. Not enough...not yet anyway, but it's a remarkable movement that each year engages more and more people.
Rosa Parks, Ghandi, Father Roy, Dr. King, Nelson Mandela and others who sacrifice for principle and belief command an extra measure of attention and rightly so in my view.
I hope that's helpful.
November 20, 2005 11:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
The SOA is not a simple case of a "bad thing". Certainly amoung its alumni are some (many?) people who have done terrible things. But there is scant to no evidence that these people were trained by SOA to do terrible things.
Yes, the SOA has had some horrid polices in the past too. I believe it when it is said that those have been changed.
The SOA serves a very good purpose too. The idea was (and still is) to train military leaders from Latin America, who far too often come in as glorified thugs and militia leaders, how to be professional soliders who serve their governments and their people instead of themselves.
It isn't hard to see how so many people who have done so many terrible things are on the SOA alumni list. But it isn't the SOA creating these people, it is the SOA failing to change them.
November 20, 2005 2:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you, that does help some. I hope you don't mind if I press you on this particular issue just a bit.
Civil disobedience is a powerful tool that can be used when unjust laws are made or enforced.
Thoureau believed taxes supporting the Mexican American war were unjust and so refused to pay them. Rosa Parks believed regulations requiring blacks to sit in the back of a bus were unjust and so refused to follow them. Gandhi believed British control of India was unjust and refused to cooperate. That should be enough for examples, and we can see the pattern repeated in other great men and women, though we should remember--not to denigrate his beliefs or the change he affected in the world--that Nelson Mandela was a saboteur.
My problem with civil disobedience is that it too often seems to serve as a paper badge of courage, if you will. It seems to me, and my perception may be skewed, that there are a lot of people who might as well be professional protesters, and that to them the important thing about protesting is not whatever law or injustice is at issue, but rather proving they care by being arrested for something unrelated such as disorderly conduct.
So, for me, the question is what is accomplished by the people who will be arrested at this vigil? With 15,000 people there, it probably won't bring more media attention to the problem.
That may be the wrong question to ask. Arguably, noncompliance with an unjust law is a moral imperative regardless of the consequences. But I have a hard time saying that disorderly conduct statutes are unjust criminal provisions.
Thus, I wonder what is the reasoning behind violating statutes of general applicability in order to protest a particular governmental action that isn't directly related.
In the end, this sounds like a large protest that can be successful without people being arrested.
November 20, 2005 3:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
November 20, 2005 4:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
And if there are instances of SOA graduates who came out better than they went in--where's the evidence?
It's somwhere in the nearly 59,993 graduates you didn't name as thugs.
November 20, 2005 4:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is someone who spends a year in the penitentiary for trespassing at Fort Benning motivated by the desire to get a “paper” badge of courage or to be known far and wide as a “professional protestor.” Yikes. That sure doesn’t come close to describing any of the people I know who have done so. Surely it means something to go to jail or risk physical harm from the police or others. What is a decision not to protest a policy you feel very strongly is wrong—a paper badge of cowardice, or hypocrisy or laziness?
I can’t tell if you think civil disobedience is almost never justified or what. One thing is for sure—when you do it there is no certainty that it will “move the needle.” You often don’t get to know that until later. Sometimes much later. That said, I strongly believe that the moral authority of those who have gone to jail for their opposition to the SOA has made them more effective than would otherwise have been the case. I’m not saying the only way to protest is to go to jail—not at all. But those, like Mrs Parks, who take greater risk inspire others to act and resist in their own way.
November 20, 2005 5:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Having attended the protests at Ft. Benning a couple times, I'd like to make a couple comments. First, the people who commit civil disobedience in this setting are usually motivated by religious conviction. Joyce is right in that many are Catholic nuns and ministers in Protestant denominations. It's a solemn setting. The event immediately presenting the civil disobedience is a memorial service where those killed by SOA alums are remembered. Their names, if known, are read aloud. Sometimes it's just age and gender of victim. The civil disobedience used to involve just trespassing onto Ft. Benning, nothing flashy, although I believe security has increased since 9/11, and that may no longer be an option.
Second, while I agree that not all SOA alums have turned out badly, no one has ever been able to convince me of the need for this school. Why should we be in the business of training Latin American militaries, particularly when they have been so keen to overthrow the government and use techniques learned at the SOA to oppress their fellow citizens?
November 20, 2005 5:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nice try. But you didn't address the training manual issue. Beyond that, talk about specious logic. According to you, my burden of proof is that I have to associate each graduate with some anti-democratic atrocity and you needn't associate a single one with--oh, let's say preventing an atrocity or arresting a death squad member or something. SOA has been under attack for 15 years. You would think they would have developed their own honor role of graduates who have promoted democracy in Latin America. To my knowledge they have never done so. Do you know otherwise? Is it your view that Latin America is net/net more democratic today than it was 15 years ago and that SOA has some demonstrable role in achieving that if it's true? Again, what's the evidence? Who are SOA's graduate heroes? Has the School ever expressed any regret whatsoever that some of their graduates have turned out to be terrorists and murderers? If they have changed their curriculum, (as opposed to just changing their name, which they have done) why did they do so? And would they have done so absent opposititon and protest. And by what evidence do you claim--if you do--that they do not currently teach "agressive interrogation" techniques? Or are you just on Cheney's side on the torture question.
November 20, 2005 7:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Bearing Witness" may, for those who engage in civil disobedience, knowing they will be arrested, I say "may" constitute not just this single act for which they are arrested. The time in jail may also be "bearing witness." Now it may be they are there in jail unseen and unheard. But in the context of the universe and in the context of one's faith in ultimate mystery, that bearing witness may constitute a profound and deep act, which in some hidden and myterious way is having cosmic reverberations.
Never discount the action of bearing witness as coming from deep within a person and lasting throughout the whole process, from action to arrest to imprisonment.
Just as mystics in monasteries or hermitages. It all depends upon one's state of mind and heart.
I have never done this. But I would contemplate it for the right cause. It's easier for priests or nuns who are celibate and thus who can more easily give themselves in this way. It's harder to do when you have a spouse, a house, and so on. I have immense respect for those who undertake such a deed in the right state of mind. I'm grateful for that.
November 20, 2005 7:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is an odd assertion. Can you cite any examples of thugs turned good by the SOA?
November 21, 2005 7:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Is it your view that Latin America is net/net more democratic today than it was 15 years ago and that SOA has some demonstrable role in achieving that if it's true? Again, what's the evidence?
Latin America, along with the rest of the world, is certainly less Communist than it was 15 years ago, which was the point of the school in the first place.
November 21, 2005 5:01 PM | Reply | Permalink