Posted by Benjamin on: 10.17.2007 /
Between 1979 and 1987, the Unites States armed, trained, and financially backed the military forces of the government of El Salvador, which over the same period carried out a policy of ongoing, systematic murder against the Salvadoran population. … I am speaking of the systematic murder of over seventy thousand men, women, and children who were noncombatants–journalists, priests, nuns, teachers, labor organizers, students, political figures, and others. Roughly one percent of El Salvador’s population was destroyed. Also as a direct result of United States actions, another seventy thousand civilians were similarly murdered during the same period by the military government of Guatemala. Finally, and again during the same period, the United States created a force of counterrevolutionaries (the “contras”) to overthrow the revolutionary Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The contras … deliberately attacked defenseless civilians, including old people, women, and children.It is true that the United States did not itself carry out the systematic murder in any of these countries. Yet it put the bullets and guns in the hands of the murderers, trained the murderers how to use them, and organized them for that end. The United States might just as well have pulled the triggers of the guns itself. What concerns me is that the people of the United States, like the people of Nazi Germany, allowed their government to do such a thing.From How Holocausts Happen: The United States in Central America by Douglas Porpora
Iraq body count has documented the violent deaths of 80,000 noncombatants (read: journalists, priests, nuns, teachers, labor organizers, students, political figures, and others) in Iraq during the U.S. unprovoked invasion and ongoing occupation of that nation since 2003.
So here are my questions:
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Comment by: David H
1 10/17/07 11:55 AM | Comment Link |I learned of the situation in S. America first hand, sort of. While in college I took a missions trip to Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras. We stayed for a few days in Guatemala City, which at that time was averaging 3 political murders per day. We were not permitted outside the seminary complex in which we were housed because witnesses to political killings were also murdered. The week before we arrived to seminary students (a marries couple) were killed because, apparently, they had seen a political killing while simply walking down the street. Perhaps they spoke to someone about it and became a target. But the people at the seminary were absolutely convinced the two sets of killings were related.
During that same trip I spent a few days in an Indian village in the mountains of Guatemala. I spoke to a young man who said he and his friends were joining the “revolution” against the American government of his country. He told me about the assassination of the Guatemalan president by the CIA a few decades before. That man was killed for returning land taken by American corporations to his people. The Indian man was friendly to me, bu he was skeptical of both God and the supposed Democracy of the U.S. because one had stolen his family land and the other had done nothing to return it.
The roots of my distrust of American government and politics began there.
As for responsibility, to remain silent once you have knowledge is to tacitly approve. I speak because I oppose what is happening. I still feel a weight of responsibility because a) I am American and b) there is an interconnectedness between by lifestyle and all these things happening around the world. I don’t always know how to responsibly deal with those things. However, I am a pacifist who doesn’t believe in the power of political change. I don’t believe in killing anyone and think the ballot box is a joke. That may also inform my view that the U.S. empire will not likely ever be able to curtail its unhelpful way of acting in the world.
As an aside, there are massive (tsunami?) ripple affects to some of this. It is well documented now that the Iran-Contra affair involved the CIA jumping into the cocaine trade as a way to parley its black-budget dollars into more weapons money. That effort helped create the drug cartels, led to the Panama invasion (Noriega was the go-between on the drug deals and had to be deposed when he went into business for himself), has caused the US to give hundreds of billions of dollars in military aid to Columbia in the intervening time (a member of our church just returned from a Christian peacemaker mission to Columbia and reported the country continues to be in a virtual state of war and normal citizens die on a daily basis in gunfights between government, revolutionary and drug cartel fighters; farmers face starvation or crime because their fields are destroyed annually as defoliants are sprayed to combat coco production, etc.), and we can’t forget the millions in the U.S. who have had their lives affected by drug addiction (addicts who died, people being incarcerated in what has become one of the largest prison systems in the world, and the many, many people who lost loved ones). On that last item, reports about the Iran-Contra plan say our domestic drug problems were an expected outcome. As I said, most of this is well documented, yet only one small-time military operative was ever prosecuted for Iran-Contra and that led to his becoming a hero for our political conservatives.
So, no, I don’t think the problem can be fixed. But that doesn’t permit me to be silent either.
Comment by: gooditsraining
2 10/17/07 3:41 PM | Comment Link |Benjamin,
Like you, I was young during Reagan, I was born in 1981. But even though I was young, I spent a good amount of time in college wondering why my mom, or why people my mom’s age didn’t do anything to protest what was happening in Central America.
I think that this is very complex. Class has to be taken into account. Many Americans were (as they are now) working multiple jobs to survive. As much as I was changed by Porpora’s book, I thought in places he was too hard and too generalizing regarding the American people. People in the working class, and other marginalized people simply do not have the luxury of engaging in dissent.
Now, at the same time, I went to school with people who take things a step further in their analysis. Such peers of mine believed that even the American working class knew more and had more privilege to use their voices against these injustices. I know the people who believe they have a right to tell working class people to stop working and engage in dissent, and that people who do not engage in dissent really have no excuse and no moral ground to stand on, etcetera.
The bottom line is that what I am talking about is whether or not poor or marginalized people have, so to speak, an “out”, for their lack of engagement against the actions of their government. How fortunate that I have time to sit around and ponder these hypotheticals.
The fact is that even though my mom was and is working class, and her father before her, I am not working class. I have a degree and right now, don’t even have to work to support myself (though that will not last forever).
I might’ve been 3 years old during the height of the genocide in Central America, but I was 2o years old on 9/11 and 22 when we went to Iraq. I participated in protests, walk outs, I went to meetings, signed petitions, wrote my congressmen and senators. I voted, I campaigned for Democrats for one election cycle and for the Green Party the next. I went to an “alternative” college specifically to learn economics and study politics from a non mainstream, “progressive” point of view. And in college I dropped banners over overpasses, I wore bandannas at protests where I raged against things like the concept of private property, I put my body in front of military vehicles, I was pepper sprayed by the police, I helped shut down streets. I did all of this out of “moral obligation” because I didn’t want the blood spilled by my government on my uncalloused hands.
I did this for 4 years. Guess what? Nothing changed. I saw my friends split over “ideaological differences”, became disgusted by extremisms, by arguments over the most “radical” strategies and tactics. I saw good people turn into ugly human beings obsessed by their own temporary stardom as activist giants, I saw good men revert to sexism while claiming to stand up for justice, stupid professors push vulnerable minds toward an imaginary revolution that ended in year long trials, skewed interpretations, all the consequence of young people participating in civil disobedience without wanting to pay or even understand that civil disobedience comes at a price.
I am starting to howl and I didn’t mean to.
I am not an “Activist” anymore in the sense that you will not find me on the streets of Seattle at the end of this month, wearing a bandanna over my face, trying to “change the world”. I am sick and tired of holding signs while assholes honk their support for peace and smile at us thru their SUVS. The only thing I am sure of is that I cannot even fathom the amount of suffering this government has caused the people of the Middle East– and not just the people of the Middle East, but literally millions– the US government participating in secret wars, in trade agreements,– there is no end.
We are an empire, and we will fall. History will judge us centuries from now.
Some say we must continue to struggle. What I am trying to do in my personal life is work now on the local level, to engage myself in ways that can make a difference. I am not saying protesting isn’t important, I’m just saying I can’t do it anymore. I had a professor that used to say “burn out is a luxury of the bourgeoisie”. Maybe he was right.
Thanks for the space to rant! This rant was unplanned, but it sure felt good :)
Comment by: Benjamin ady
3 10/18/07 8:26 AM | Comment Link |<blockquote>That may also inform my view that the U.S. empire will not likely ever be able to curtail its unhelpful way of acting in the world.
and
So, no, I don’t think the problem can be fixed. But that doesn’t permit me to be silent either</blockquote>
David
Wow–thankyou for sharing your firsthand experience in Guatemala. My understanding is that you identify with the Mennonite Faith? In light of your two statements above, where/how would you say you and/or Mennonites/peace churches in general find or express hope in the midst of all this?
Comment by: Benjamin ady
4 10/18/07 8:30 AM | Comment Link |Good,
<blockquote> Some say we must continue to struggle. What I am trying to do in my personal life is work now on the local level, to engage myself in ways that can make a difference.</blockquote>
I enjoyed your rant. At first I was feeling guilty because I *haven’t* been that involved. But I liked your conclusions (they kind of let me off the hook).
You seem to be saying that you’ve found that all the protesting didn’t really give you any hope/vision for actual change, but that perhaps you have found some such hope/vision in local proactive (rather than protestive) activities? Can you talk more about this?
Comment by: Benjamin ady
5 10/18/07 8:34 AM | Comment Link |I am wondering what you all think about the little idea I’ve had putzing around in the back of my head for a while that maybe I can escape/avoid some of the responsibility for my government’s cruelty and murders by geographically relocating and/or … (here’s a kind of scary one) renouncing my citizenship? Or is it better/more efficaceous to stay inside the system and try to effect change?
And anyway, can I really escape the system? I mean I would just be running from system A to system B.
Maybe the deal is I have to take steps to move into system C: the system of the where/when of the people who are the *victims* of the U.S. empire? Maybe that’s the only way? Sounds kind of terrifying.
Comment by: Rachel
6 10/18/07 9:35 AM | Comment Link |Gooditsraining, thank you so much for your eloquent and authentic post. You can rant here anytime!
Comment by: Rachel
7 10/18/07 10:15 AM | Comment Link |I think that it would vary widely according to the individual German citizen. What did they know and when did they know it, what opportunities did they have to resist, what personal risks did they face if they did resist (ex. a single adult vs. a parent with small children), what actions if any did they take, did they hide or aid Jews, did they participate in the Resistance?
I think that for many US citizens the responsibility level is high.
I share in the responsibility because I was complicit in supporting an unjust war. I was chanting “USA! USA!” at a Support the Troops rally while my nation was dropping bombs on the children of Baghdad. I have repented and I know that Christ has forgiven me, but I am still in the process of forgiving myself and forgiving the pastor who I believe led me astray.
I was age 8 to 16 during the Reagan years. I was almost completely encased in a fundamentalist Christian, politically conservative, militarist and rabidly nationalist world view and very little outside information or perspectives pierced that box. To oppose Ronald Reagan’s policies would have been seen as unChristian, unAmerican, and completely unacceptable in the eyes of my parents and my fellow parishioners.
I am a follower of Christ so I believe that change is possible.
Comment by: David H
8 10/18/07 8:11 PM | Comment Link |I believe people can change. I am not sure (probably not even particularly concerned) whether enough people can change to change the course of a country (this one at least). I say the latter particularly because democracy in the US makes fruitful change particularly difficult. What we have in this country is a non-representative democracy (if such a thing is possible).
I say I am not particularly concerned with whether the country changes because giving too much thought to that is not a recipe for a happy, productive or fruitful life. I have to do what I can do about the people I know or meet. Whatever happens then isn’t up to me.
I heard an interesting guy on NPR today. Larry Sabato is a political scientist who has written a book about the need for a new Constitutional Convention that would enact changes to return the US to a representative democracy free of some of the issues surrounding lobbyists and the big money behind elections. Don’t know if I agee with everything he wrote, but his concept is something I could get behind. Radical change is needed to change this country.
Comment by: David H
9 10/18/07 8:48 PM | Comment Link |Full disclosure: I identify with Mennonites, but I am not a Mennonite.
The above being said, the Mennonite church seems to be struggling with how to be inside the US right now. Many Mennonite congregations don’t strictly endorse the peace stance that once identified the denomination. Likewise, many strict Mennonites are hammered by Christian conservatives (a group they might be theologically close to in many respects) because the Mennonite credo is to do your faith and only speak it when you have to.
My take on the hope in the midst of that (based on long talks with my pastor and my own experience, which is not necessarily the same as a Mennonite perspective) is that it is based on self-awareness and education, trying to have a voice in the midst of all that is happening, and not worrying about whether it changes the world. If I am changed then I may help to change others. But if there is a God — and I believe there is — then he will take care of the rest.
The actual mission may involve sponsoring a child, building a house for someone, making disaster relief kits, helping Mennonite professionals to get into countries where their skills are useful (whether in promoting sustainable small business in Southeast Asia or Central America, or helping to dig wells in Africa). It isn’t about whether you can help everyone, the job is for me to help someone. I can’t ever do enough, but rather than allowing that to desensitize or paralyze me, I try to use it as impetus to do one thing and find hope in that.
Does that explain at all?
Does that explain.
Comment by: Benjamin ady
10 10/20/07 4:27 PM | Comment Link |David,
that explains excellently. thankyou. I’m glad to have you in my life–to be reminded of rather important thing by you!
Comment by: David H
11 10/22/07 6:18 PM | Comment Link |I’m not very good at accepting compliments. I like them as much as anyone, but never feel as if they are deserved. But it would be wrong to simply ignore one. So even though it feels awkward, thanks.