School of Assassins: Guns, Greed, and Globalization

Like Carmichael said so long ago: Violence is as American as Apple Pie. There is nothing new in our going around the world torturing our hostages, and killing them. Read this book. You need to. Abu Grabh was no aberration. People just don't go around with their cell phones cameras anymore. Our generals are bemused to discover that torture is considered off the table, and the rules of the Geneva Convention apply. Since when? The great Catholic Publishing House Orbis Books courageously and consistently speaks for human rights and democracy in our hemisphere and world wide, and at home, as the Publishing House connected to the American Society of Foreign Missions known as Maryknoll. Several Maryknollers have been martyred by graduates of this so-called School of the Americas, including Father Bill Woods and Sister Ita Ford and Sister Maura Clarke, etc., their assassinations never finding judgment and justice in this present world. This military brainwashing institute for torture and death has also been implicated in the martyrdom of Archbishop Romero who shortly before his own assassination peladed with President Carter to close it down. Instead Carter's successors only increased it. General Noriega, whose Panama once hosted this institute while still under US direct and open colonialist control, is one noted graduate among the several in powr in the worst days of genocide and military oppression in El Salavador, Guatemala, the Southern Cone, etc., and when George Bush the First, who once vacationed with Noriega, found him no longer so malleable, he did away with him with the death and destruction of thousands of poor Panamanians, a foretaste of Bagdhad. Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois has worked very hard for decades to do away with this immoral and evil institute which has brought suffering and death and torture to thousands of millions of our fellow Americans of this Hemisphere, mainly in the interest of preserving and expanding US business interests (again, think Iraq). During Bob Dole's campaign stunt of going to Managua to "debate" President Daniel Ortega (recently re-elected to another term now twenty years later), President Ortega responded to DOle's accusation of religious repression in Nicaragua by pulling out a large photo of Father Roy being arrested at the School of the Americas, then and now based at Fort Benning, Georogia. This is the true religious repression, that we cannot speak for truth, justice and peace with the prophetic, revolutionary and compassionate love commanded and modelled by Jesus Christ. This book is written by Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, a master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary and author of Harvest of Cain and The Politics of Compassion as well as Saving Christianity from Empire and War Against the Poor: Low-Intensity Conflict and Christian Faith. See also his Families Valued: Parenting and Politics for the Good of All Children and other publications, please, as he is proloific a prophet of peace and o

Jack Neslon-Pallmeyer's new book, School of Assassins: Guns Greed and Globalization, brings the history and development of the School of the Americas, including its recent name change to The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, into perspective along with the developments of the global and national economies and militaries. In a time when the role of the SOA/WHISC is being seriously and persistently challenged, the name change and other cosmetic alterations represent a need to continue to build and strengthen the thoughtfulness and articulation of the movement and voices that are calling for the school's closure. This book ties together many of the critical issues at play in the debate over the SOA/WHISC and puts it in the context of the role it has in the world today, as well as how it has developed and changed with the changing world and economy in which we all live. One of the key points stressed in this book is that the SOA/WHISC's role has never been stagnant or unaltered, but rather that it has and continues to change along with the goals of the United States foreign policy. The purpose and role that the SOA/WHISC fulfilled at its inception is not the same as the purpose it is serving today. The US foreign policy, beginning around the time the SOA was opened in Panama, has evolved throughout different stages, each trying to maintain a different balance between military and economic strategies and tactics to enforce and implement its goals. Beginning in a period of major military domination, the SOA was created at a time when military repression and power was the main way of enforcing and achieving the US foreign policy goals. However, economic tools and leverage, such as those achieved by the International Monetary Fund and The World Bank, began to gain momentum and strength as efficient ways of implementing foreign policy. The second stage of US foreign policy was thus a balance between the growing use of economic leverage and the lessening of the need for military repression. During the third stage that the SOA/WHISC functioned in, economic power implemented through the afore mentioned institutions and their programs (such as Structural Adjustment Programs), took the front line in US foreign policy. The decreasing role of the need for military and violent repression in this stage had a great impact. It threatened and concerned those in the military to seek ways to maintain the immense budget and importance of the military at a time when it was not really being used or was as necessary. This "military industrial complex" is another key issues at stake in Nelson-Pallmeyer's book, and plays a large role in the remilitarization that characterizes the fourth stage of US foreign policy. The SOA/WHISC's role in the present day is greatly founded on this remilitarization as an important tool in order to achieve the goals and stability desired by the US foreign policy. The new name given to the SOA represen

The US Army School of the Americas uses American tax dollars to fund its training of Latin American military thugs at Ft Benning GA. This book details the atrocities of the school's graduates--the massacre of 6 Jesuit priests in El Salvador, the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the rape and murder of 4 US churchwomen, just to name a few--and explains the motives of SOA Watch, the organization aimed at closing the school down. Anyone interested in/concerned with US foreign policy in Latin America, the Roman Catholic Church, or the violent oppression of the poor should read this book. Each November, thousands gather in Ft Benning to hold a peaceful protest outside the school. Over 2300 (including myself) risked arrest there in 1998; read this book and you will understand why.