School for Sadists

April 17, 2009 10:27 AM

Father Luis Barrios,Episcopalian priest, full professor and academic chair at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, was sent to federal prison five weeks ago, after being convicted of trespassing. He was arrested in November for pushing a wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran about one mile past the gates of the Fort Benning military base in Georgia. Fort Benning is the home of The School of the Americas also known as "School for Dictators", "School of Assassins", and "Nursery of Death Squads". SOAW campaigns to close this School which has the distinction of providing murderers for Latin American Regimes.
posted by adamvasco (48 comments total)

this is one of those times when, despite agreeing with you, I wonder if there isn't a mite too much editorializing in the fpp.
posted by shmegegge at 10:32 AM on April 17 [5 favorites has favorites]

"I wonder if there isn't a mite too much editorializing in the fpp."

Except for the title, the whole FPP is a list of facts. Facts that when ordered as they are, imply a viewpoint, but just facts.
posted by orthogonality at 10:35 AM on April 17 [16 favorites has favorites]

Big difference between "facts" and "editorializing".

But then, I'm a bit biased. My wife has participated in many SOA protests, to the point that she eventually was banned from entering any military base. She had to get a special dispensation in order to attend her son's Marine Corps graduation.
posted by HuronBob at 10:37 AM on April 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

or, on postview, what orthogonality said.
posted by HuronBob at 10:38 AM on April 17

Episcopalian is a noun describing a member of the Church. Episcopal is the adjective for things pertaining to the Episcopal Church USA.

"I am an Episcopalian, therefore I was married by an Episcopal priest."

/beanplate
posted by Pollomacho at 10:41 AM on April 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'm having a hard time rustling up some sympathy for the alternative views of this matter. The 'other side' is what, exactly?
posted by grounded at 10:41 AM on April 17 [4 favorites has favorites]

Except for the title, the whole FPP is a list of facts.

that's a pretty big "except."

also, calling it a "school for muderers," even though I aggree with calling it that, feels editorial to me.

but i'm not gonna make this into a thing. maybe I'm wrong. I apologize for the early derail if this passes metafilter muster.
posted by shmegegge at 10:44 AM on April 17

calling it a "school for muderers,"

my bad. i meant "providing murderers."
posted by shmegegge at 10:45 AM on April 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

Some of Mexico's most ruthless drug commandos were trained at The School of the Americas.
posted by eye of newt at 10:46 AM on April 17

The 'other side' is what, exactly?

EMBOLDENING THE SOUTH AMERICAN LEADERS WHO CARE ABOUT PEOPLE!!
posted by DU at 10:48 AM on April 17 [2 favorites has favorites]

he didn't belong there. did he not understand that basic fact?
lots of good memories of fort gordon ga. here...
posted by billybobtoo at 10:51 AM on April 17

I think what Shmeggege was objecting to was closer to OutrageFilter than the editorializing, but there's a better solution than saying so in the thread. No offense, shmeggege.
posted by Riki tiki at 10:57 AM on April 17

Harvard trained Bush and Berkeley has the distinction of providing the "murderers" that gave us the atom bomb, but no one protests for their closure. Wharton gave us all those MBA's that blew up the global economy, but they get to go on and on with state funding. At least SOAW has a mandatory human rights curriculum.
posted by humanfont at 11:00 AM on April 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

Glad to see the Christian Left getting some airtime. I'm a little worn out on Christian=Right wing bigots.
posted by small_ruminant at 11:02 AM on April 17 [5 favorites has favorites]

I wonder if they know it closed 9 years ago?
posted by Pollomacho at 11:08 AM on April 17

Yes, the choice of language in a post can be confusing, and could certainly color an interpretation of the facts. This could easily be a short skit.

*phone rings*

ADMINISTRATOR: Hello, School of Americas! Finishing school for murderers!

FATHER: I'm calling about my son, Reginald. He didn't quite make the prep school we'd hoped for and ... I'm sorry, is this school for children who are already murderers, or those who wish to become murderers?

ADMINISTRATOR: They rarely are murderers to begin with, sir, although if you can provide the appropriate evidence, he might skip a year. Two, if he has flair. Yes, we produce murderers of all sorts. Death squads, mostly, for those with team spirit. Assassins, if he doesn't work well with others. Dictators if he has political aspirations. Is he sadistic?

FATHER: Solipsistic? No, no. Well, perhaps a little. I think he recognizes that other people exist.

ADMINISTRATOR: I asked if he was sadISTic, sir. Pin-sticking, hair-pulling, bed-wetting, fire-setting, you came home early to find him trying to figure out how his little sister's missing kitten "worked" as he held a flashlight over the poor mewling thing's intestines sadistic, sir?

FATHER: Oh, right right. Yes, we've had a spot of trouble with that. Family dog. Made Christmas a trifle awkward.

ADMINISTRATOR: Excellent, excellent. He might qualify for the Young Vivisectionists Scholarship!

FATHER: Good Heavens, I'd no idea!

ADMINISTRATOR: We'll be sending one or more individuals and/or teams to attempt to kill your son. Should he survive, we'll leave the necessary paperwork behind. Mustn't tell him, of course. The element of surprise is very important, sir. Address, please?

FATHER: *click*

ADMINISTRATOR: Hello? Hello? Oh, bother. You'd think people would have caught on to caller ID by now. Nancy, could you look up this number? It appears we have a new candidate, slightly gunshy.

NANCY: Solo attempt or sophomore squad?

ADMINISTRATOR: Oh, let's just send one. No need to come on strong. Now, where are those application forms?
posted by adipocere at 11:09 AM on April 17 [42 favorites has favorites]

On the plight of the mentally ill in America's prisons: "seems to me everyone was better off when these people were in some type of institution, or home. apparently somebody thought otherwise, and said let's let them out to mingle with society. they can make it on their own. christ, take a walk around manhattan any day, and tell me how many crazies you run into. they'd be better off in some place, in the country, with calming surroundings."

On the plight of the Hatian people: damn, there must be some leaders in haiti, that arn't corrupt.

On dealing with the Iraqis in December 2003: grab em by the short and curlies....and their hearts and minds will surely follow...

On racist language in the 1911 Encyclopedia: sounds about right to me... what is the problem exactly?
posted by absalom at 11:17 AM on April 17 [6 favorites has favorites]

Is there some way to call out a member of MetaFilter that doesn't involve calling him a dick and linking to his posting history in a thread?
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:18 AM on April 17 [8 favorites has favorites]

Fr. Barrios is one of six prisoners of conscience convicted of bringing the protest on to the base this year, and part of the dozens who have done so in the past.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 11:18 AM on April 17

AdamVasco:
Thanks for a great post. To those who would question your facts, I'll point out that each of those terms returns the SOA in the top five when Googled. So obviously that is how this institution is known.

But these are more than facts. They are important truths. We Americans have supported, through our tax dollars, some very evil people and activities. Innocent people are dead because of this "school." People have died because Americans blindly trusted their government and military to do the right thing. They didn't do the right thing . . . they promoted evil. We Americans need to look behind the jingoist curtain and work to close that place down.
posted by ahimsakid at 11:21 AM on April 17 [2 favorites has favorites]

I've been to a few SOA protests. Excellent place for "first time" protesters - the city is incredibly welcoming... even the local police helped out by serving food at one of the catholic worker tables.

My biggest gripe with the SOA (aside from the fact that we've contributed to the deaths of thousands of innocents via this notorious DoD program) is that it makes absolutely no sense to spend defense dollars training foreign soldiers. This is the same kind of nonsense that directly contributed to 9/11.

Also - it should be noted that the SOA is simply the "flagship" school for training foreign nationals. There are numerous schools of the same type around the country.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 11:22 AM on April 17

so, is this post about the guy that got sent to prison for trespassing on a military base? or the School of the Americas? or that he was sent to prison because he was trespassing on the military base where the School of the Americas is?
posted by ArgentCorvid at 11:22 AM on April 17

Is there some way to call out a member of MetaFilter that doesn't involve calling him a dick and linking to his posting history in a thread?

1-800-950-NAMI
posted by gman at 11:22 AM on April 17

"I wonder if they know it closed changed it's name 9 years ago?" FTFY

But I guess some people fell for that, eh?
posted by HuronBob at 11:25 AM on April 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

My father worked there between tours in Vietnam. I think around 65-66. He would completely agree with the editorializing. Though training murderers was not the original intent nor all they do there. But that is what they did "best." Unfortunately.

From SOA we got sent down to Panama. Ft. Gulick. To plan for another attempt at invading a little island off the coast (later aborted). A little island with a bearded cigar smoking dictator. You may have heard of it. Anyway. He bitched about SOA even then. So they sent him back to Vietnam.
posted by tkchrist at 11:31 AM on April 17 [6 favorites has favorites]

"I wonder if they know it closed changed it's name fundamental policy by order of Congress 9 years ago?"

Fixed your fixing for you.

Also - it should be noted that the SOA is simply the "flagship" school for training foreign nationals. There are numerous schools of the same type around the country.

Yes, other evil institutions do things like show foreign journalists around the Newseum and the Washington Post and give them classes on freedom of the press. Others bring women business leaders to the US for conferences on mangement. Yes, these programs are just simply EVIL!!!

Yes, the School of the Americas changed to a "Democratization" program in the aughties. The anti-insurgency training program was dropped from the curriculum.

I'm not denying the horrible, bloody past of the place, but I do know that the types of programs that are going on are much better and aren't the "how to violate human rights" type stuff. Now, I'm not sure the same can be said for training programs going on overseas where we can deny that the ruthless generalisimo is a graduate. It's much harder to do that when you've clearly brought the guy in as was the case with the SOA.
posted by Pollomacho at 11:38 AM on April 17

If America doesn't train the worlds death squads, who will?
posted by chunking express at 11:40 AM on April 17

You want editorialising and outrage... fine
The Empire of the Political Military Juggernaut known as USA aka "Land of the Free" brooks no dissent.
Whilest crooked bankers and their political sycophants dine in the finest restaurants in downtown Manhattan to discuss the nuances of torture memos a priest eats prison slop and endures solitary confinement not half a mile away. His crime : to protest about a school funded by American taxpayers which trains foreign soldiers to rape and kill their own nationals. Etc. Etc. Carry on.
posted by adamvasco at 11:45 AM on April 17 [10 favorites has favorites]

If America doesn't train the worlds death squads, who will?

To be fair what the dictatorships did with that training was little known to most of the Special Forces trainers at first. And the idea was we would clean up our mess by having a Death Squad for death squads. But nobody wanted to admit they trained these guys in the first place and there was no cohesion of policy between administrations.

Remember. There was a real palpable Soviet threat at the time. And the Central American policy decisions were informed by the CIA not the regular military. At least at first. The CIA ALWAYS over reacts and is more short-sighted becuase they are more political and have political appointed leadership.

The regular military was stuck in this ridiculous position of enforcing the US foreign policy of trying to contain the very real and dangerous Soviet influence AND playing nice with these rotten psychotic dictators they'd inherited who'd been put in place by the previous ruling class Aristocracies and United Fruit and the like.

It turned out the Soviets were going to go broke and were leaving the revolutionary movements high-and-dry - so they started drug trafficking. And the ruthless dictatorships were drug traffickers too. The policy polarized the politics and impoverished the region. Eventually there was nobody sane in charge to talk to. So we just bailed and left those people to the wolves. Anyway. What a cluster fuck.
posted by tkchrist at 12:01 PM on April 17 [3 favorites has favorites]

Pollomacho... The SOA still trains foreign soldiers, who then go and violate human rights and kill people. They are NOT training them to cook, change diapers, or grow soy beans. Don't drink the kool aid....

Why would this be the job of the United States...?
posted by HuronBob at 12:04 PM on April 17

If America doesn't train the worlds death squads, who will?

Oh. I forgot. To answer you:

Russia. China. Israel. France. The UK. Germany. Pakistan. No shortage of countries willing to step up to train and arm psychopaths.
posted by tkchrist at 12:05 PM on April 17

The CIA ALWAYS over reacts and is more short-sighted becuase
they will never be held accountable and they know it.

It turned out the Soviets were going to go broke and were leaving the revolutionary movements high-and-dry - so they started drug trafficking. And the ruthless dictatorships were drug traffickers too.
As were/is the CIA.
posted by Sailormom at 12:09 PM on April 17

Why would this be the job of the United States...?

I think his point is when you have a powerful military like the US does, and you live in a world of tenuous alliances with people who have questionable values yet exist in strategically important places, you are inevitably going to do business with bad people. And the military kills. It is what it does. So, as part of that unpleasant business, by necessity it trains people to kill. And through our needed alliances we train foreign people. Even bad people.

If you accept the premise that we require a military to defend our "interests" at all then, given that humans and their political communities are imperfect, you except that at times we will do unpleasant things to innocent people. Which isn't to excuse those that commit illegal or immoral acts under the guise of policy, but rather there will be institutions capable of doing these things simply by default under that premise. And not all that serve under these institutions are immoral or evil or sadistic. Nor are the institutions themselves. Merely the imperfect policies they attempt to enable.
posted by tkchrist at 12:15 PM on April 17 [2 favorites has favorites]

they will never be held accountable and they know it.

Of course. Because they are political appointees and tied to a leadership that has a vested interest in never being held accountable. Hey. That's your system.
posted by tkchrist at 12:16 PM on April 17

Pollomacho... The SOA still trains foreign soldiers, who then go and violate human rights and kill people. They are NOT training them to cook, change diapers, or grow soy beans. Don't drink the kool aid....

See, that's the thing, they shipped that stuff overseas. The guys that come to the former SOA take the same "management" and Dale Carnegie type "Leadership" courses that they give to Civil Servants. Overseas they learn stuff like quashing dissent and overthrowing popularly elected governments, but this way they aren't directly traced back to the SOA. I'm not defending this behavior by the US, just clarifying what type of bs is going on there.

Why would this be the job of the United States...?

In theory its the old, "he's a bastard, but he's our bastard" mentality. If we're the one that trains them they (theoretically) get a certain loyalty to the good old USA.
posted by Pollomacho at 12:18 PM on April 17

I'm having a hard time rustling up some sympathy for the alternative views of this matter. The 'other side' is what, exactly?

Paraphrasing but not endorsing the following statement of a friend of mine who is an SOA apologist:

"Best practices in interrogation do not involve torture, as the resulting information is often inaccurate. The SOA trains interrogators to get accurate information while adhering to the Geneva conventions. What these interrogators choose to do after they leave the SOA is the moral burden of themselves and their superiors. In other words, they are murderous torturing scumbags before they show up at the SOA; the SOA just makes them more effective at interrogation and counter-insurgency."

Note that even if the above statement were completely true, and we are making these interrogators less likely to torture, there's still both too much moral hazard, and too much bad PR for our country to make the SOA a worthwhile idea.
posted by BrotherCaine at 12:23 PM on April 17

In theory its the old, "he's a bastard, but he's our bastard" mentality. If we're the one that trains them they (theoretically) get a certain loyalty to the good old USA.

Yeah. Like Manuel Noriega or Saddam Hussein?

I think the idea that we honor these relationships very thoroughly is scoffed at by the participants in these programs. Our political system is simply too fickle from one administration to the next.

I do think that foreign officer training programs do have real lasting benefits in that they show other countries that our institutions, apart of individual policy, are fairly honest and somewhat democratic overall. At least by comparison to what most officers from, say, Syria or someplace are used to. When hostilities heat up people who have been here and met our officer corps know there are honorable people to talk too. Which is very handy.
posted by tkchrist at 12:28 PM on April 17

Here's a piece from the Guardian from 2001: Backyard terrorism: The US has been training terrorists at a camp in Georgia for years - and it's still at it
posted by homunculus at 12:44 PM on April 17

Thanks for this post. I've been to School of the Americas protests, and the annual protest the weekend before Thanksgiving is hands down the best protest I have ever been to. I've been trying to get back ever since.

It's more like a funeral service, really, calling out all the names of people who have been killed by graduates of the school. It's incredibly somber, but respectful. I didn't see any of the usual jerks you meet at protests of its size, and there were location set up all around giving people free food and water.

They've been arresting people who "trespassed" there for years. Several of my friends spent time in prison - one of them 6 months - because he pled not guilty. It used to be just a line on the pavement that people crossed - thus "cross the line."

When I went several years ago, there was heavy barbed wire blocking off the entire entrance. There seemed to be a break in the wire a little further down the fence and, I'm not joking, an actual path into the other side. It was lined with dark sheets (or something that obscured vision) so that people on the other side of the fence couldn't see what happened to people that went through the path. There seemed to be cops on the other side just waiting to arrest people.

I wish it got more attention, honestly, especially with the whole Guantanamo Bay shut-down. It still seems like far too few people know about its existence.
posted by lunit at 2:21 PM on April 17

Most Army training schools in the US have an international component where our allies send military personnel for training. Schools ranging from Armor and Special Forces to Quartermaster train international students. There are a couple of reasons for this:
- It is much cheaper to ship students over here for training than it is for our allies to build training facilities for, as an example, air defense systems.
- It helps familiarize students with students from the US and other allies. Important if you ever forsee joint military operations.

So I wish the articles were a little clearer in stating what they advocate. The thirdworldtraveller link states that 60,000 people have graduated from SOA, and then provides lists quantifying that about 160+ of them have been involved in murders and human rights violations. Do they want SOA closed? Yes. What else? Do we close down all other military training institutions to international students? Or just those from Latin America? What is the end goal?

FTA:

But, the SOA has very different goals. Its curriculum includes courses in psychological warfare, counterinsurgency, interrogation techniques, and infantry and commando tactics.

Fort Benning is home of the infantry. That's what they do.
posted by txvtchick at 3:52 PM on April 17 [3 favorites has favorites]

To reiterate my previous post, one of the issues the present administration had to deal with when visiting Mexico is the rising rate of violence from the various drug lords. And one of the biggest problems is how professional and well armed the drug lords' troops are, mainly because they are former Mexican military and police that were very well trained by the SOA.

Our own anti-drug officials are now facing well armed and armored, professionally trained troops belonging to these drug lords and I've heard that they are not very happy about it.
posted by eye of newt at 4:28 PM on April 17

And one of the biggest problems is how professional and well armed the drug lords' troops are

Sure portions of the Mexican police and army have defected to narcotics gangs. Drug lords pay better. If you're gonna end up getting a bullet in the head anyway you may as well do it for more cash and better coke. This is mostly a function of a failed state, World Trade, and oligarchic politics.
posted by tkchrist at 5:54 PM on April 17

You seem angry.
posted by LarryC at 6:18 PM on April 17

The facts are so biased. They seem to have an anti-American agenda.
posted by caddis at 6:41 PM on April 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

Good god, again. The SOA. There are days I can hardly wait for the next earth-shattering asteroid strike.

But I repeat myself.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:19 PM on April 17

If America doesn't train the worlds death squads, who will?

Oh. I forgot. To answer you:

Russia. China. Israel. France. The UK. Germany. Pakistan. No shortage of countries willing to step up to train and arm psychopaths.

You forgot Poland.
posted by notswedish at 8:55 PM on April 17

Good lord, pollomacho - never would have taken you for an SOA apologist.

The point I was trying to make is that I've yet to have someone provide me with a good explanation of why the fuck we are training foreigners on U.S. soil with U.S. tax dollars. I'm dead serious - this "he's our bastard" mentality directly led to 9/11. You're also doing a lot of hand-waving about how the SOA is Dale Carnegie stuff and how they only learn truly evil shit "overseas." How about providing some sources for this assertion? I'm sure people learn evil shit all over the world - but as an American I don't want them learning evil shit here, in America. Ever. Because it leads to terrorist attacks and I don't like being attacked by terrorists.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 5:59 AM on April 23

Oh, I'm no SOA apologist, I'm just saying that the Noriegas of the future are not attending there, they are attending schools in other countries set up by the former SOA administrators. It helps with the plausible deniability to offshore that shit. In the cold-war era we didn't give a rat's ass who knew that we trained strong-men because everybody knew we were the "good guys," the "free world." Now that we have to revamp our corporate image we're doing precisely what other corporations do and ship the dirty little secrets off to other countries where we can blame problems on lax local laws. For the US it's lax human rights laws, for corporations it's lax labor and/or environmental laws, but it's essentially the same concept.

I don't disagree one bit about the connection between this type of bullshit and 9/11 or Pinochet or the Shaw of Iran or any other of those resultant horrors, I'm just saying that the kind of thing they bring military atache's to the states to learn - here - is "teamwork" and "management" as opposed to proper torture techniques. It isn't that we stopped teaching that stuff, we just stopped bringing them here to learn it.

I cannot cite sources because that is part of my job. I work reviewing the programs that bring people to the US. 99% these guys are not coming for torture 101. True, some I'm not sure about but what goes on here is much more what txvtchick describes above.

Incidentally, how many dictators, strong men, and murderers also attended Harvard (Bush included)? Maybe we should shut them down too! (I'm being sarcastic)
posted by Pollomacho at 7:57 AM on April 23