SOA Watch (SOAW)
will be holding a protest at Fort Benning, Georgia later this month,
as they do every year, to protest US imperialism and one of its
ugliest manifestations. At Fort Benning is the School of the
Americas (SOA), a training ground for international soldiers, the
thugs of our puppet-regimes in Latin America. It was founded in 1946
to protect the Western Hemisphere from “Communism.” In reality,
all that meant was preventing the states of Latin America from
becoming satellite states of enemies like the USSR (as could be said
of Cuba) or states forming agendas independent of US interests and
responsive to the desires of their citizens (as in the case of
Allende's Chile). The defense of Latin America from Communism was
the same as the defense of Latin America from Europe (Monroe
Doctrine) – it all meant the preservation of US domination in Latin
America and the absorption of Latin American resources and labor into
US capital.
The
role of the SOA in all this is the training of foreign
military personnel in methods of torture, interrogation,
counterinsurgency, assassination, and how to 'disappear' members of
society under the regimes installed by the US. This
school is funded by US taxpayer money to train the rapists and
murderers of Latin American dictatorships which
are friendly to American business.
Now we must ask, who is it
that is targeted by these US-trained monsters? The Pentagon was
forced to release training manuals for the SOA which advocated false
imprisonment and torture as methods of interrogation. The targets
suggested for these manuals were those who support
“union organizing or
recruiting,” distribute
“propaganda in favor of
the interests of workers,” “Sympathize with demonstrators or
strikes,” and make
“accusations that the
government has failed to meet the basic needs of the people.” So,
the SOA's targets for executions, assassinations, and 'disappearing'
are those who stand up for raising living conditions, escaping
poverty, and organizing labor. With this said, consider the rampant
assassinations in Colombia of trade unionists and the recent murder
of labor organizer Oscar Lopez, and reflect on who must
be responsible.
I am leaving on a
cramped bus for a weekend from Massachusetts all the way down to
Georgia to take part in the SOAW protest against the SOA this month
(November). As responsible citizens, it's imperative to know of the
crimes of our government. As we go about our day, it is easy to
forget that we support, perhaps unknowingly, the violences of our
government. Yet every year there appears the SOAW to signal
disapproval by the American people of the crimes of its government
and the violence of American capital.
