Television Enemies of War
By GARY MacEOIN
Enemies of War, scheduled to
air on PBS Jan. 18, condenses into 58 minutes 20 years of the history of El
Salvador. It examines in considerable detail the role of the United States in a
civil war that cost 75,000 lives -- overwhelmingly noncombatants-- displaced
more than a million Salvadorans and caused massive material damage.
Three incidents are highlighted because they were decisive in
bringing home to the U.S. public the role of the U.S. administration: the
assassinations of Archbishop Oscar Romero in March 1980; of four U.S. women
missionaries later that year; and of six Jesuit priests together with their
housekeeper and her daughter in November 1989.
By 1980, the United States had already taken sides. As President
Reagan put it: The people of El Salvador, we are told, werent ready
for democracy. The only choice was between the left-wing guerrillas and the
violent right. Some thought there might be another alternative: to let
them work it out for themselves. But Secretary of State Elliot Abrams excluded
that option. The guerrillas, he insisted, were fighting for a communist
system. It did not matter that Romero had repeatedly stated that the
popular agitation was simply to secure basic human rights.
Romeros assassination was a key event. It brought together
five small popular groupings into a common front, called the Frente. This
quickly grew into a formidable combat force, terrorists to some, freedom
fighters to others. To oppose it, the United States over the following decade
poured in nearly $6 billion to prevent the defeat of the Salvadoran army. In
November 1989, the Frente launched a massive coordinated attack on the
countrys main cities. After days of fierce fighting the attack was
repelled, leaving a stalemate of exhaustion on both sides.
Ironically, the military high commands response to the
offensive resulted in a defeat the Frente had failed to deliver. The generals
ordered the Atlactl division, a crack unit trained at the School of the
Americas, to kill the six Jesuits who had continued Romeros task of
accompanying the people. The two women were collateral damage.
Orders were: Leave no eyewitnesses.
It was a stupid blunder. Although the U.S. administration used its
most sophisticated damage-control techniques to create the impression that the
guerrillas might have killed the Jesuits, House Speaker Tom Foley, D-Wash.,
responded to the worldwide reaction of horror by creating a special task force
headed by Rep. Joe Moakley, D-Mass., to investigate.
Enemies of War focuses on Moakleys struggle to
establish the truth. He succeeded only in part. The Salvadoran generals and the
U.S. administration, under threat that the Congress would cancel aid,
identified a Salvadoran colonel and six subordinates as the killers, while
insisting that the high command and the Salvadoran government had not been
involved.
At a higher level, nonetheless, Moakley was successful. The
exposure of the controlling U.S. role in a war that was being fought
Vietnam-style -- using terror against civilians, burning crops, killing
livestock, bombing villages -- forced the U.S. administration to agree to a
negotiated end to the war. Under United Nations auspices, a peace agreement was
reached in 1992. The top leadership of the Salvadoran army was purged. The
Frente handed over its arms to the United Nations and transformed itself into a
political party. A U.N.-sponsored truth commission identified by name the top
Salvadoran generals as having given the orders to kill the Jesuits. It also
determined that 85 percent of all atrocities during the war had been the work
of the armed forces and their paramilitary allies.
In the 1994 elections, the Frente emerged as the major opposition
to ARENA, the party of big business that controlled written and electronic
media. By the following elections in 1997, the Frente vote had grown to 45
percent. ARENA retained the presidency, but Frente candidates for mayor won in
San Salvador and other major cities.
That unfinished business remains for the United States is
Moakleys closing message. A large part of El Salvadors
infrastructure was destroyed in the war. We spent $6 billion to destroy
that country. Since 1992, our aid has been less than $500 million.
Enemies of War may force many viewers to raise issues
it touches only indirectly. Should the U.S. administration be able to wage war
without a declaration of war by Congress? Does abuse of this power possibly
explain why the United States is facing terrorist attacks on its citizens and
its property in many parts of the world at a level that no other major power
experiences?
Gary MacEoins e-mail address is
gmaceoin@cs.com
National Catholic Reporter, January 12,
2001
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