Posted on 02/19/2019 4:06:17 PM PST by SJackson
The Left distorts what happened in El Salvador in the 1980s.
In a viral exchange at a congressional hearing last week, the new congresswoman from Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, who is quickly establishing herself as the most reprehensible member of the House Democratic freshman class despite stiff competition, launched into Elliott Abrams. She accused the former Reagan official and Trumps special envoy to Venezuela of being complicit in war crimes.
Yes or no, she demanded, would you support an armed faction within Venezuela that engages in war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide, if you believe they were serving U.S. interest, as you did in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua?
Omar was cribbing from the Lefts notes on U.S. Latin American policy, and doing it badly. She made much of the 1981 El Motoze massacre in El Salvador. The idea that Abrams is somehow directly implicated in this bloodcurdlingly awful event is completely absurd. He was assistant secretary of state for international organizations in the Reagan administration, then became assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs on December 10, 1981. The massacre occurred the next day. Unless we are to believe the El Salvadoran military unit took his change of jobs as a green light to indiscriminately kill villagers (which unfortunately was not a new practice), Abrams obviously had nothing to do with the massacre.
Nonetheless, the Omar attack is an opportunity to examine the premises of the Lefts narrative on Reagans policy in El Salvador, which supports the persistent attacks on Abrams as a war criminal. To paraphrase the famous Mary McCarthy line about Lillian Hellman, every word in this narrative is a lie, including and and the.
In what follows, I rely throughout on Russell Crandalls book The Salvador Option: The United States in El Salvador, 19771992, a fair-minded, factual account thats a marked contrast to the tendentiously left-wing material that dominates online.
NOW WATCH: 'McConnell Says Trump Will Sign Bill and Declare National Emergency' Watch: 0:35 McConnell Says Trump Will Sign Bill and Declare National Emergency
El Salvador Was a Violent Mess Before Reagan Got Involved First, some background. El Salvador was not a liberal bastion prior to the Reagan administrations showing up. The political order in El Salvador had long depended on a partnership between oligarchs and the military. Beginning in the 1960s, they fashioned rural paramilitaries to maintain their rule. In the late 1970s, upon increased leftist agitation, these groups began to target alleged subversives in the Church, or as one flyer from a death squad put it, Be Patriotic Kill a Priest.
The country was undemocratic and coming apart at the seams. A former general, Carlos Humberto Romero, stole the 1977 election. His ascension brought more instability, violence, and repression.
Anyone who thinks this situation would have resolved itself easily and peacefully absent U.S. involvement should consider the example of Guatemala. When the Guatemalan government, facing its own Communist insurrection, rejected military assistance from the U.S. in the late 1970s, it didnt lead to a better outcome, but almost certainly a worse one. The absence of American advisors, Crandall writes, did not prevent the Guatemalan military from launching a genocidal, scorched-earth counterinsurgency campaign against Marxist guerrillas or, more specifically, against the civilian and desperately poor Mayan population believed to be supporting these guerrillas.
The FMLN Received Massive Foreign Support Attacks on U.S. intervention always leave out the other foreign players. Havana, Crandall writes, forged the El Salvadoran left-wing groups together into the FMLN and provided significant logistical, intelligence, strategic, and military assistance. And Nicaragua lent major support, shipping matériel to the guerrillas by sea and air.
At the outset, Hanoi offered the guerrillas 60 tons of arms. At one point the Nicaraguan Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega said in a speech in Hanoi, We sincerely thank the Vietnamese people and highly value their support for the heroic Salvadoran people.
Ethiopia and Czechoslovakia also chipped in. None of this, of course, ever brings denunciations of imperialism.
The foreign aid is one reason that the FMLN achieved an astonishing strength of over 10,000 troops by 1983, and as late as 1989 could launch a substantial attack on the capital that aimed, among other things, to assassinate the democratically elected president.
FMLN Atrocities Get No Attention The guerrillas were nasty bastards who sought to inflict as much physical damage to the country as possible. They started early. Former leftist militants and guerrillas revealed then and now, according to Crandall, that as early as 1970, they were in fact initiating violent acts in what they considered a mostly urban revolution, such as bombings, killing police officers, and kidnapping political figures and businessmen.
Their methods were brutal, including coerced recruitment, and often self-defeating. In the words of one correspondent in the mid 1980s, the guerrillas handed the government propaganda victories by attacking unarmed peasants in La Paz province, razing municipal halls in nearly three dozen villages, executing two town mayors and kidnapping several others. The guerrillas did everything they could to wreck the country. They attacked the countrys most important hydroelectric dam and destroyed electrical towers.
And they carried out truly infamous acts, although they are rarely mentioned now.
In a neighborhood called Zona Rosa in 1985, guerrillas ambushed six off-duty U.S Marines who provided security for the American embassy. They killed nine civilians and four Marines.
In 1991, a U.S. military helicopter was downed by guerrilla fire. The co-pilot died in the crash, then the FMLN executed the surviving flight mechanic and pilot.
Jimmy Carter Began Our Aid to the El Salvadoran Government and Persisted in His Support U.S. policy in El Salvador wasnt the invention of the Reagan administration. It basically stayed on the path set out by the Carter administration.
In March 1977, the strongman Romero rejected American military assistance, upset by criticism of his human-rights record. In October 1979, the Air Force carried out a coup. The moderate reformer José Napoleón Duarte, a Christian Democrat and civilian, came to head the junta. The Carter administration supported the government, and it authorized military assistance as Carter was leaving office in 1981.
The Carter administration didnt end its backing after the assassination of Archbishop Romero on March 1980. It briefly suspended aid after the horrific killing of four American church workers, but with the government seemingly teetering on the brink, it quickly reinstated and augmented the aid.
Were the Carterites war criminals, too, or did they just want to avoid a repeat of Nicaragua, where the Communist takeover had done nothing for democracy or human rights? Clearly, the latter.
The Reagan Administration Got the El Motoze Massacre Wrong It is true that the Reagan administration wrongly minimized the 1981 El Motoze massacre. But this wasnt out of malice or support for the killers.
U.S. ambassador Deane Hinton doubted the initial reports about the atrocity, since they were aired on the FMLNs propaganda arm, Radio Venceremos, not otherwise a credible source. Embassy officials couldnt get on the ground to investigate, according to Crandall, and an inspection from the air was cut short when their helicopter was shot at. When Abrams publicly relayed bad information about the massacre, he was relying on the erroneous reporting from the embassy.
It is true that the perpetrators were troops trained but the U.S., but, as well see, we didnt train Salvadoran troops to carry out massacres. Far from it.
Democracy Was the Reagan Policy The Reagan administration backed the 1982 election in El Salvador, and after its success, doubled down on elections. The 1982 vote, which had been threatened by the guerrillas, was a way to show the lack of popular support for the FMLN. Reagan took the opportunity to occupy the rhetorical high ground, telling Congress that the Salvadoran peoples desire for democracy will not be defeated.
The Reagan Administration Supported the Moderates In the 1982 vote, the Christian Democrats got 35 percent, while the right-wing party, ARENA, linked to the death squads, got 26 percent. The U.S. worked to ensure in the aftermath that the ARENA leader, Roberto DAubuisson, didnt take power with the support of minor parties. Under U.S. pressure, the military backed an alternative, Alvaro Magana, who became president.
In the 1984 presidential election, the administration strongly supported the moderate Jose Duarte against DAubuisson. In case there was any doubt where the U.S. stood, it denied DAubuisson a visa. Duarte ended up defeating DAubuisson 54 to 29 percent. The political end of the line for DAubuisson came in ARENAs poor showing in National Assembly elections the next year.
As far as the Reaganites were concerned, it was good riddance.
The Reagan Administration Attacked the Death Squads In a controversial speech in 1982 to the Salvadoran-American Chamber of Commerce, Ambassador Deane Hinton (mentioned above regarding the El Motoze massacre) said of the death squads, the mafia must be stopped. Your survival depends on it. The gorillas of this mafia, every bit as the guerrillas in Morazán and Chalatenango, are destroying El Salvador.
His replacement, Thomas Pickering, spoke in the same key, denouncing the death squads as murderers, torturers, and kidnappers who must be held to account and threatened to cut off aid. In a 1983 visit to El Salvador, at a dinner with the president, Vice President Bush used his toast to calls the death squads a cowardly group of common criminals and murderers.
The rightists bristled at the criticism, but death-squad activity diminished.
The U.S. Worked to Create a Better Military The U.S. trained El Salvador military officers outside the country to remove them as much as possible from the influence of the militarys existing culture. Slowly, the U.S. weaned the military from its traditional, malign relationship with the countrys oligarchy. The amount of U.S. aid and the threat of cutting it off gave the U.S. crucial leverage to push reforms.
The U.S. Supported Negotiations The Reagan policy was a dual track of keeping up the military pressure on the guerrillas while supporting negotiations with them. After an unsuccessful but harrowing 1989 offensive by the FMLN, both sides were ready to deal. The U.S. pressured president Alfredo Cristiani, elected from ARENA in 1989, to get it done. When the two sides hammered out an agreement, the George H. W. Bush administration pledged its support, and indeed poured in resources by the tens of millions to buttress the peace. 28
The military was dethroned from its leading role in society, among other important reforms, while the FMLN put down its arms and became a political party. Amazingly enough, it worked and the agreement stuck, making Representative Omars question to Abrams whether he still considered Reagans El Salvador policy a fabulous achievement a very stupid one.
The excuse for her is that shes profoundly ill-informed. More blameworthy are all those people who should know better but spread the big lie about Reagan policy in Central America, and give the likes of Representative Omar their noxious lines to read.
..................
As the new Democrat stars demonstrate, facts, we don't need no stinken facts. Not that the Dem old hands care much either.
CAUTION: Be on the lookout w/ anything she does for Somalia----like sending our tax dollars to this ****hole. She has a HUGE conflict of interest.
pjmedia.com
Ilhan Omar Endorsed Somalias New President. Four Days Later, Omars Brother-in-Law Had a Powerful Job in His Administration
BY DAVID STEINBERG JANUARY 24, 2019, PJ Media.com
Democrat Omar (MINN) became the first Somali-American legislator in United States history when Minnesotas House District 60B elected her on November 8, 2016. The distinction won Omar immediate fame and influence in Somalia, which was entering the final stretch of a critical presidential election of its own.
According to prominent federal security clearance defense attorney Sean Bigley (read below), Omar's documented actions in the weeks that followed would almost certainly prevent any applicant with such a background from obtaining or keeping a U.S. security clearance.
Ilhan Omar is now a U.S. congresswoman, however. Elected federal officials are exempted from the arduous security clearance process; they hold de facto clearances once sworn in to office. Further, Omar will likely be privy to a significant amount of classified national security information this term. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has granted Omar's request for a seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
------------------------------
Corruption affects virtually every aspect of the Somali society: from public officials misuse of public goods for private gain and the solicitation of bribes in exchange for basic services to the clan-based patronage networks used to obtain employment and political appointments. -- Transparency International, 2018
The common hyperbole for describing government corruption -- rampant, or endemic -- does not help adequately illustrate Somalias recent administrations. As bad as it gets does the job, literally: Transparency International, the massive NGO dedicated to exposing public-sector corruption, has placed Somalia dead-last among all nations on Earth in its annual Corruption Perceptions Index -- for 11 consecutive years. Somalia has occasionally managed to tie, though never outrank, North Korea.
Any significant involvement by a U.S. citizen in Somalia's election process would likely raise eyebrows at America's intelligence agencies. On December 20, 2016, just a few weeks after her election to Minnesota's state legislature, Ilhan Omar was in Mogadishu with then-President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, a favorite for re-election. He reportedly invited her to appear with him prior to the election taking place.
Omar likely met at least one other Somali presidential candidate on her trip. According to a speech by her soon-to-be husband Ahmed Hirsi, Ilhan had just flown from Nairobi to Mogadishu on a plane with former Somali Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, known as Farmaajo (Cheese). Farmaajo -- a U.S. citizen who, inconceivably, had boarded that plane as a Buffalo, NY, cubicle employee of the New York Department of Transportation -- was the eventual surprise winner of Somalias presidency on February 8, 2017.
The New York Times deemed Farmaajos bribe-fueled win one of the most fraudulent political events in Somalias history. In the run-up, some Parliament seats had gone for more than $1 million each: The entire process has been so bad, several analysts said, that the Shabab militant group, one of the deadliest Islamist organizations in the world, isnt even trying to derail the vote because the corruption free-for-all almost makes the militants look upstanding by comparison.
Omar getting ready to cash in?
Just a few weeks after her election to Minnesota's state legislature, Ilhan Omar was in Mogadishu with then-President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, a favorite for re-election. He reportedly invited her to appear with him prior to the election taking place.
Omar Endorsed Somalias New President. Four Days Later, Omars Brother-in-Law Had a Powerful Job in His Administration
DEMOCRATS FALL DEEPER INTO THE "WE HATE-AMERICA" PIT.
Muslim complaining about war crimes
LOL
She is reading her lines very well. Directly as they were written by her handlers.
Good article. Too much information for democrats of course. And the rest of the internationalist Fake News in ABCNNBCBS.
The House of Representatives is now a worthless governing body and there is a continuing coup against the President. The American government is in serious trouble and that means the country is also.
The Left’s agenda in Latin America, supported by U.S. Marxists, is what is reprehensible about events in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala when Reagan was in Office.
While that support from U.S. Marxists and the support of Cuba went about its work in those countries at that time, of course, to them, it was a “crime” that the U.S. government did anything to oppose them. Trump’s folks need to announce that treasonous work of the American Left.
When hearing the name, Ilhan Omar, think two words: Freedom/Liberty...hang onto them, it will be an up hill battle for decades if we let Islam into our government; Islam is NOT compatible with American values.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.