Is the US Mil. Training of African Special Ops a prelude to disaster?

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2014/05/training-special-disaster.html

Is the US Mil. Training of African Special Ops a prelude to disaster?
By contributors | May. 31, 2014
By William R. Polk

With everyone’s attention focused either on the European elections, President Obama’s speech at West Point or the Ukraine, a story by Eric Schmitt in The International New York Times of Tuesday, May 27, 2014 may not have caught your attention. I believe, however, that it provides an insight into some of the major problems of American foreign policy.

~snip~

Without much of the rhetoric of Mr. Sheehan and General Donahue and on a broader scale, we have undertaken similar programs in a number of countries over the last half century. Iran, Turkey, Indonesia, Guatemala, Egypt, Iraq, Thailand, Chad, Angola to name just a few. The results do not add up to a success almost anywhere. Perhaps the worst (at least for America’s reputation) were Chad where the man we trained, equipped and supported, Hissène Habré, is reported to have killed about 40,000 of his fellow citizens. In Indonesia, General Suharto, with our blessing and with the special forces we also had trained and equipped, initially killed about 60,000 and ultimately caused the deaths of perhaps 200,000. In Mexico, the casualties have been smaller, but the graduates of our Special Forces program have become the most powerful drug cartel. They virtually hold the country at ransom.

Even when casualties were not the result, the military forces we helped to create and usually paid for carried out the more subtle mission of destroying public institutions. If our intention is to create stability, the promotion of a powerful military force is often not the way to do it. This is because the result of such emphasis on the military often renders it the only mobile, coherent and centrally directed organization in societies lacking in the balancing forces of an independent judiciary, reasonably open elections, a tradition of civil government and a more or less free press.

Our program in pre-1958 Iraq and in pre-1979 Iran certainly played a crucial role in the extension of authoritarian rule in those countries and in their violent reactions against us.

[Squinch]

1. Nah. It's like what we did with the Afghani mujihadeen. And nothing came of that...

[newfie11]

2. Why do we do this?

Our track record is horrible. Is this just so our military has someone to fight in the future.
We need to stop infiltrating countries with
our "military expertise"!

[bemildred]

3. When was it not? It's what we do. nt