El Salvador Unpatriotized History

El Salvador: 1950's, 1960's US supports the dictatorship, helps it form a comprehensive police state with three separate branches for repression of the population. By late 1970's country is in civil war, with rightist "death squads" combing the country to kill priests and leftists, and leftist guerrilla revolution is underway. Govt policy (the president is a general) is to slaughter strikers and demonstrators. 1979 coup of junior officers promises reforms. Carter supports the reform govt while applying pressure to prevent it from reforming. In 1980 reformers publicly quit the govt to join the rebels, as govt continues to kill protesters in large numbers. Archbishop of San Salvador condemns the massacres, blames the govt, is shot and killed by death squad. In 1981 as one of his last acts as president of US, Carter authorizes 10 million dollars aid to the govt. Reagan becomes huge supporter of the govt, with some 6 billion dollars in aid from 1980 to early 1990s. Congress investigation accuses Reagan admin of lying about its aid to El Salvador's govt. US "advisers" and "mercenaries" are active throughout the country, helping identify leftists, present at torture sessions, etc. Salvadoran military men sent to US facilities in Panama and US for training. El Salvador becomes famous for the huge number of people "disappeared" and for use of torture, all part of counterinsurgency program paid for by US govt, with extensive participation of US personnel.

Source for the above: William Blum. Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 2004).

[A few quotes on this from Noam Chomsky:]

The third plank in the program, the "activist" foreign policy, is also of the traditional variety though again at an extreme of the spectrum: intervention, subversion, aggression, international terrorism, and general gangsterism and lawlessness, the essential content of the highly-praised "Reagan doctrine." Its central achievement was the organization of an onslaught of state terrorism in El Salvador, which achieved its major goal: to avert the threat of democracy and social reform by destroying "the people's organizations fighting to defend their most fundamental human rights," in the words of Archbishop Romero (soon to be assassinated by elements of the U.S.-backed security forces) as he pleaded with President Carter not to send military aid to the junta, which would, of course, use it for exactly these purposes. Carter's limited war was rapidly expanded under Reagan, yielding a notable increase in the level of slaughter and general terror. The operations were carried out by a U.S. mercenary army, trained, supplied and directed by the United States. U.S. forces also participated directly. U.S. air force units flying from foreign bases coordinated air strikes, an innovation that yielded an immediate improvement in the "kill rate" among defenseless villagers and fleeing peasants. Long-range reconnaissance patrols were conducted by CIA paramilitary agents who led and accompanied Salvadoran units, allowing "the Reagan administration to secretly exceed its publicly declared limit of 55 military advisers in El Salvador" and to overcome the ban on participation by U.S. personnel in field operations; these operations were "spectacularly successful," according a U.S. official, in calling in "aircraft to hit the targets."[FN 4]

When the savage terror had achieved its aims, and was becoming an impediment to further funding for the U.S. mercenary army, Washington ordered that the scale be restricted and removed further from public view, as was done, demonstrating with great clarity just who was controlling the process from the outset. The commanders in Washington are much lauded for this display of moderation.

(Noam Chomsky. The Culture of Terrorism. Boston: South End Press, 1988, pp.26-27).]