Salvadorans welcome troops returning home from Iraq

[Judi Lynn]

Salvadorans welcome troops returning home from Iraq
The Associated Press
Published: February 20, 2007

COMALAPA MILITARY BASE, El Salvador: El Salvador welcomed home a contingent of soldiers returning from Iraq, three weeks after their replacements began arriving in Iraq.

The first group of 290 returning soldiers was greeted Monday at this air base just south of San Salvador, the capital, by Defense Minister Gen. Otto Romero, who told them "you have may finished six difficult months in Iraq ... but the work has been noble."

Romero also mourned the loss of Capt. Jose Soto Ochoa, who was killed on Oct. 20 when his convoy hit an explosive device in Iraq's Wasit province. He was the fifth Salvadoran soldier to die in Iraq; about 20 others have been injured in attacks by insurgents.

"The blood shed by Capt. Soto and the other soldiers who have fallen in our contingents makes us understand as soldiers the importance of the armed forces' mission." Romero said.
(snip)

El Salvador is the only Latin American country with troops to Iraq, and there is significant public opposition to that policy here.
(snip/...)

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/20/america/LA-GEN-Salvador-Iraq.php



El Salvador's President Tony Saca, troops, and his friend, _{George W. Bush}

[Judi Lynn]

1. Recent El Salvador Timeline:

Civil war

1961 - Right-wing National Conciliation Party (PCN) comes to power after a military coup.


Monument to civil war victims: More than 70,000 died, disappeared
1969 - El Salvador attacks and fights a brief war with Honduras following the eviction of thousands of Salvadoran illegal immigrants from Honduras.

1977 - Guerrilla activities by the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) intensify amid reports of increased human rights violations by government troops and death squads; General Carlos Romero elected president.

1979-81 - Around 30,000 people are killed by army-backed right-wing death squads.

1979 - General Romero ousted in coup by reformist officers who install a military-civilian junta, but this fails to curb army-backed political violence.

1980 - Archbishop of San Salvador and human rights campaigner Oscar Romero assassinated; Jose Napoleon Duarte becomes first civilian president since 1931.


Two massive quakes struck in 2001


2002: Salvador struggles with quake aftermath
On This Day 2001: Earthquake devastates Salvador
1981 - France and Mexico recognise the FMLN as legitimate political force; US continues to assist El Salvadoran government whose army continues to back right-wing death squads.

1982 - Extreme right-wing National Republican Alliance (Arena) wins parliamentary elections marked by violence.

1984 - Duarte wins presidential election.

1986 - Duarte begins quest for negotiated settlement with FMLN.

1989 - FMLN attacks intensify; another Arena candidate, Alfredo Cristiani, voted president in elections widely believed to have been rigged.

Peace and natural disasters

1991 - FMLN recognised as political party; government and FMLN sign UN-sponsored peace accord.

1993 - Government declares amnesty for those implicated by UN-sponsored commission in human rights atrocities.

1994 - Arena candidate Armando Calderon Sol elected president.

1997 - FMLN makes progress in parliamentary elections; leftist Hector Silva elected mayor of San Salvador.

1999 - Arena candidate Francisco Flores beats former guerrilla Facundo Guardado in presidential election.


Despite protests at home Salvadoran troops remain in Iraq
2001 January, February - Massive earthquakes kill 1,200 people and render another one million homeless.

2002 July - US court holds two retired, US-based Salvadoran army generals responsible for civil war atrocities, orders them to compensate victims who brought case.

2003 August - 360 Salvadoran troops despatched to Iraq.

2003 December - El Salvador - along with Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala - agrees on a free-trade agreement with the US. The government ratifies the pact in December 2004.

Saca presidency

2004 March - Arena candidate Tony Saca wins presidential elections.

2005 March - OAS human rights court votes to re-open an investigation into the 1981 massacre of hundreds of peasant farmers in the village of El Mozote, regarded as one of the worst atrocities of the civil war.

2005 October - Thousands flee as the Ilamatepec volcano, also known as Santa Ana, erupts. Days later scores of people are killed as Tropical Storm Stan sweeps through.

2006 March - El Salvador is the first Central American country to implement a regional free trade agreement with the US.

2006 April - El Salvador and neighbouring Honduras inaugurate their newly-defined border. The countries fought over the disputed frontier in 1969.

2007 January - 21 inmates are killed in a riot at a maximum-security prison west of the capital.
(snip/)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/country_profiles/1220818.stm

[Judi Lynn]

3. Salvador in Iraq: Flash Back

Salvador in Iraq: Flash Back
Author: Jonathan D. Tepperman, Former Deputy Managing Editor, Foreign Affairs

April 5, 2005

~snip~
During El Salvador's bloody twelve-year civil war, which ended in 1992, the United States had used American trainers and vast amounts of cash to strengthen the Salvadoran military in its battle against leftist guerrillas. It had also allegedly supported the use of right-wing paramilitaries and death squads to liquidate the leaders of the rebellion. And it was this latter policy, the articles claimed, that was now being contemplated for Iraq: the creation of elite commando units, trained by American Special Operations Forces, and made up of Shia militiamen and Kurdish peshmerga, to hunt down leaders of the Sunni insurgency. When asked, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stopped short of categorically denying the Salvador option, but refused to comment further.

Although Rumsfeld isn't talking, others close to him have, and their comments suggest that the Salvador option may be on the table— an ominous sign for Iraq. In resurrecting El Salvador— one of the darkest episodes in recent U.S. history— as a model of a successful counterinsurgency, the Pentagon and hawks close to the administration have relied on faulty history and wishful thinking. Contrary to conservative conventional wisdom, U.S. policy in Central America during the '80s was seriously misguided, and— other than contributing to the death of tens of thousands of civilians— ultimately ineffectual. If applied in Iraq today, the results could be even worse.

Despite Rumsfeld's tepid denials, enthusiasm for using El Salvador as a precedent for Iraq runs deep in Republican foreign policy circles. Prominent hawks close to the administration have publicly touted the benefits of this approach. Max Boot, of the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that U.S. policy in Central America was "tremendously successful" at putting down local insurgencies and that "everyone agrees" it is the model to follow. And Eliot Cohen, director of the Strategic Studies Program at Johns Hopkins— and whose last book was reported to be bedtime reading for President Bush— has said, "We did counterinsurgency very well in Salvador."

Apparently the White House agrees. Despite the fact that El Salvador's civil war killed 70,000 people on both sides and featured widespread torture and the deliberate targeting of civilians, Vice President Dick Cheney has recommended applying this type of strategy in Iraq. Large parts of the uniformed brass seem to feel the same way, according to numerous senior military officers I spoke with. Explains Andrew Bacevich, a former Army colonel and now a professor at Boston University, "In the institutional memory of the military, it is viewed as a success. That's the place we got counterinsurgency right."
(snip/...)

http://www.cfr.org/publication/7988/salvador_in_iraq.html

[IndianaGreen]

2. I am certain that Captain Ochoa died in Iraq to defend El Salvador's security

or perhaps he died because his government wanted to be a good lapdog to Bush. The article points out that Salvadorans are opposed to this military adventure. What a surprise! Most Poles are against their sons going to Iraq, as are most Aussies, Ukrainians, Japanese, Brits, and all the other countries in Bush's glorious Coalition of the Willing.

In every case, the governments ignored the popular will and chose a wasteful and needless military commitment to a country that had never threatened them.

[Mudoria]

4. Thank you El Salvador...

[PLF]

5. Thanks for what?

[Judi Lynn]

6. Thanks for being beaten down, slaughtered by US-backed right-wing death squads, apparently.

Really takes all kinds, doesn't it?

Simply amazing.