Negroponte’s nomination as first director of national intelligence overtly changed the ground rules. The 1980's Central American wars are now salient, namely the period in which Negroponte played a key -- if highly questionable --role as US ambassador to Honduras. Though reportedly he feigned amnesia when questioned, Negroponte implicitly participated in controversial events during the period 1981-1985, including:
(1) bribes handed down from the embassy to high ranking military and government officials and (2) ties between Honduran death squads and the witnessed massacres of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and dissidents in nearby El Salvador.
I came to learn of Israel's involvement in the support of the Apartheid government during my research in South Africa. Shocked as a young grad student, I subsequently delved into the "pariah club." I did not publish what I learned, it would have been politically incorrect in academia. Moreover, given my hitherto unquestioned personal support for Israel as the homeland for the Jewish people -- combined with the incongruity of what I had then learned (people of the Holocaust supporting fascism?) I elected at the time to kept mouth -- and files --shut. Not that this discovery will be any surprise to historians today, but I will post on my blog some of the documentation and details I found out about the Israeli government's support of the contra group FDN, based in Honduras at the time Negroponte served there.
Those pieces notwithstanding, El Salvador, for neocons, was a significant model of success which they now want to emulate in Washington's occupation of Iraq. The unearthing of the phrase “Salvador Option” last year likely recalled for ultra conservatives like Elliot Abrams and John Negroponte a marvelous era for them when Jimmy Carter (read human rights) was defeated by the Reagan-Bush ticket. In the wake of that victory, that new administration committed itself to establishing freedom, democracy and free market economies throughout Central America. Some Pentagon and White House officials are reportedly now talking about resurrecting the "Salvador Option" in Iraq (think ME region). That would include creating "hit squads" composed of Kurdish and Shi’a paramilitaries to seek out and kill armed dissidents as well as non-violent sympathizers, in the same manner in which the US indirectly mobilized and financed death squads throughout Central America twenty years ago.
El Salvador in the 1980's was synonymous with the practice of state-sponsored terrorism directed against civilians considered to be threats by a military-dominated regime. Though never defeating the leftist FMLN guerrillas, the military and its associated paramilitaries managed to preside over the slaughter of nearly 75,000 of their countrymen. These included Archbishop Oscar Romero who was gunned down while celebrating mass. Other casualties of the right-wing hit squads included labor leaders, politicians, journalists, human rights activists, and healthcare personnel along with peasants and workers who were unwise enough to show deference to the guerrillas or unfortunate enough to live near them.
By invoking the Salvadoran model, US officials give a "wink and nod" credence to this country’s co-conspiratorial murders of hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans since the 1970's. In Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Uruguay, Chile and Argentina, waves of repression were tolerated, and even encouraged, by Washington’s Cold Warriors, in the name of democracy. This process is currently found in 21st century Colombia, which has experienced tens of thousands of politically-motivated killings since 1982. The majority of these were committed by paramilitary groups closely aligned with Bogotá's US-funded and increasingly US-trained forces in the so-called war on terror in that country.
W, the Decider, now complete with hat, ranch, death-squad foreign policy, presidential cover story entitled “freedom,” and now Negroponte at state, may be signaling his next foreign policy intentions about as subtly as a sledge hammer. Apparently, the goal of the "Salvador Option" would be to establish “freedom” in Iraq via a campaign of murder and repression against suspected, although not proven, "dis-loyalists" -- the definition of which appears to officially change every time we speak. An important yet overlooked component of this possible plan is that, along with the violent insurgents, legitimate Sunni dissenters seeking a role in a validated political process could be (are being?) gunned down as targets of the “Option.”
Those familiar with the history of Latin America's “dirty wars” will point out that death squads rarely limit themselves to sorting out the "bad apples;" their usual forte is cutting down whole trees. As in El Salvador and other parts of Latin America, implementation of the "Option" in Iraq could easily lead to/has led to the disappearance of tens of thousands from their homes and communities and the marginalization of those too fearful to participate in their country’s political future.
If the President is harkening back to that era when his father was Vice President and is now persuaded to invoke the Option of an El Salvador-style solution for pacifying Iraq, then his more candid advisors ought to demystify him (oh, were it possible) about the horror of such a tactic. If the White House wants a vital, democratic culture built on healthy civic institutions for Iraq, it should begin by rejecting the pathological approach that once dominated the front pages throughout Latin America.
Impeachment Watch Blogroll, updated 1/23/07, can be found here.
