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Help Close Our Own Terrorist Training Camp
by Ed Kinane

November, 2001
Volume 38, Number 9

Since the vicious and compounded horrors of September 11, U.S. Americans have been forced to a heightened intimacy with "terrorism." It has come home with a vengeance and in a manner hitherto unimaginable.

Since that dark morning the word "terrorist" has been the media's mantra. While indisputably apt in this instance, the word is nonetheless loaded. Except rarely, its only applied to "them," to the other, to non-Caucasians.

The beauty of this cognitive trick is that it keeps us from asking why September 11 happened. It keeps us from asking why the U.S. government and economic system -- for these were the targets -- are intensely and widely hated on this bleeding planet. It keeps us from seeing how central terrorism is to U.S. foreign policy and to our commercial expansion.

Since August 6 and August 9, 1945, terrorism -- or civilian-targeted warfare -- has been central to U.S. military doctrine. It has been central to our numerous nuclear threats -- both implicit and explicit -- against those who defy our imperial will. It has been central to our contempt for international law and treaty obligations. It has been central to our small arms and big arms export industry. It has been central to our propping up of a slew of totalitarian regimes. It has been central to our invasions of Korea, Southeast Asia, Iraq. It has been central to our bloody attack on Panama and to our other armed interventions in Latin America. It has been central to our massive training of foreign military, both here and abroad.

Since 1946 the U.S. has harbored Latin American terrorists and has run a terrorist training camp, first in Panama and, since 1984, at Ft. Benning, Georgia. The camp has taught anti-insurgency warfare to over 60,000 Latin American soldiers. Anti-insurgency warfare is a euphemism for civilian-targeted warfare. It is also a euphemism for anti-worker (rural and urban) warfare. The SOA is the biggest union-buster of them all.

Periodically, in response to new strategic needs, the camp changes its name. In the nineties it won notoriety as the School of the Americas. To evade that stigma, in January 2001 it began calling itself the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

Since 1990 a small grassroots, faith-based, organization called SOA Watch has struggled to expose and close the SOA regardless of its name. Every year on the weekend after November 16 we hold a Vigil Action at the entrance to Ft. Benning. Our Vigil Actions are liturgical and scrupulously nonviolent. Nonetheless, over the years 70 SOA Watchers have been prosecuted and sent to federal prison. Over 20 of these are still incarcerated. The crime? Walking on to Ft. Benning and daring to say the emperor wears no clothes.

Besides these prisoners of conscience, many thousands come to Benning every November who don't risk arrest. These, by their very presence, eloquently protest the continued operation of the SOA.

This year the Vigil Action will be held on Saturday and Sunday, November 17 and 18. For U.S. citizens, there are few better ways to oppose terrorism than to take part in this event.

Please join us. For more information -- including info on hotel/motel reservations in Columbus, GA -- check the SOA Watch website, www.soaw.org. Act now; hotel space is rapidly filling up.

Ed, a former prisoner of conscience based in Syracuse, is on the SOA Watch national board.

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