{"id":238773,"date":"2023-07-10T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2023-07-10T11:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=238773"},"modified":"2025-01-10T15:06:04","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:06:04","slug":"how-a-notorious-georgia-army-school-became-americas-training-ground-for-global-torture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/07\/how-a-notorious-georgia-army-school-became-americas-training-ground-for-global-torture\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Notorious Georgia Army School Became America\u2019s Training Ground for Global Torture"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Illustration by MintPress News<\/p><\/div>\n

6 Jul 2023 – <\/em><\/span>Fort Benning, the infamous Georgia U.S. military base, is once again in the news, changing its name to Fort Moore, thereby ditching its Confederate name. Yet none of the media covering the rebranding \u2013 not The New York Times<\/i><\/a>, the Associated Press<\/a>, CNN<\/a>, ABC<\/a>, CBS News<\/a>, USA Today<\/i><\/a> nor The Hill<\/a> \u2013 mentioned the most controversial aspect of the institution.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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Across Latin America, the very name of Fort Benning is enough to strike terror into the hearts of millions, bringing back visions of massacres and genocides. This is because the fort is home to the School of the Americas (now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC), a shadowy academy where around 84,000 Latin American soldiers and police officers have been taught on the U.S. dime on how to kill, torture and how to stamp out political activists.<\/p>\n

Thus, these units effectively serve as shock troops for the U.S. Empire, making their country safe for American multinationals to pillage. MintPress<\/i> has found that no fewer than 16 School of the Americas graduates would go on to become heads of state in their country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe school is controversial partly because of its role in promoting US hegemony in Latin America, which undermines the sovereignty and independence of other countries,\u201d James Jordan, national co-coordinator at Alliance for Global Justice, told MintPress<\/i>, adding,<\/p>\n

But even worse, it is how the school has promoted this: teaching methods of torture \u2013 even publishing torture manuals, counterintelligence, psyops, repression of political voices that don\u2019t meet the approval of Washington DC. If one looks at cases of human rights abuses by the military throughout Latin America, the number of those responsible who were trained at the School of the Americas is simply staggering.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Terror Factory<\/h3>\n

Founded in 1948, the school operated in Panama until it was expelled in 1984. Its move to Georgia that year began a period of increased scrutiny of the institute\u2019s actions. U.S. groups such as School of the Americas Watch led calls to shut it down permanently. In 1996, the Pentagon was pressured into releasing the school\u2019s official training manuals<\/a>. Even a casual glance through the nearly 1200 pages of instructions makes for sobering reading and dispels the myth forever that the U.S. is a benevolent global force.<\/p>\n

There is virtually no discussion about freedom, democracy and human rights in the documents.<\/p>\n

Instead, there is an overwhelming obsession with communists and other \u201csubversive\u201d elements that must be destroyed at all costs, as well as detailed directions on how and when to torture, who to kill and how to stamp out political and social movements.<\/p>\n

students were taught that Communism is a radically evil specter attempting to dismantle society completely and that it must be stamped out at all costs. Sure signs of communist subversion, the manuals note, include individuals refusing to pay rent, taxes or loans, people criticizing the police or judicial system, strikes or protests, student political activity, unrest among laborers, writing letters to newspapers or politicians complaining about poor living conditions or signing petitions. In other words, any democratic activity or political organization whatsoever could be deemed communist, and those participating in it were marked for potential \u201cliquidation\u201d \u2013 the school\u2019s preferred euphemism for murder.<\/p>\n

Despite claiming that communism is inherently anti-democratic, the manuals also note that radicals can also:<\/p>\n

\u2026resort to subverting the government by means of elections in which the insurgents cause the replacement of an unfriendly government of\ufb01cial to one favorable to their cause \u2026 insurgent leaders can participate in political races as candidates for government posts.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thus, any political candidate the military or police decide is undesirable is a fair target for execution.<\/p>\n

The how-to guides advocate the use of torture, blackmail, physical abuse and paying bounties for enemy dead. They also suggest a myriad of tactics to deal with insurgents, including arresting their family members and using torture. After all, they note, it is a useful fear tactic that insurgents are \u201cafraid to be brutalized after capture.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to testimony<\/a> from a former student, the school would often kidnap civilians in Panama and use them as live test subjects for students to practice torture.<\/p>\n

Reading the manuals makes clear that the U.S. target was much less some Soviet-controlled uprising but the basic tenets of democracy. And so the U.S. went about training tens of thousands of armed men to \u201ckill hope,\u201d in the words<\/a> of former State Department employee William Blum.<\/p>\n

Under U.S. tutelage, across Latin America, \u201cmilitaries became more like hyper-reactionary, hyper-armed internal police forces than organizations that were supposed to protect national borders from invasion,\u201d Lesley Gill, a professor at Vanderbilt University and the author<\/a> of \u201cThe School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas,\u201d told MintPress<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Therefore, the most infamous torturers were not \u201cbad apples,\u201d as some American officials have claimed. They were doing exactly what they had been instructed to do: mete out some of the most extreme and unspeakable violence in human history in order to pave the way for economic structural adjustment (i.e. the looting of a region by U.S. multinationals).<\/p>\n

So brazen was the School of the Americas that it also singled out U.S. political figures. The manuals describe Tom Hayden, a human rights activist and husband of Jane Fonda who would later become a California senator, as \u201cone of the masters of terrorist planning\u201d in America \u2013 a designation that would be more than enough to have him assassinated, were he from Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, or any other country where the school operated.<\/p>\n

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A guest instructor debriefs Latin American students from WHINSEC (formerly the School of the Americas) after a field training exercise.
Photo | US Navy<\/p><\/div>\n

Dishonor Roll<\/h3>\n

It is hard to overstate the influence the school, and the United States more generally, has had on the political direction of Latin America. A measure of this is how many heads of state have passed through the institution\u2019s doors. Surprisingly, there is no definitive list. However, by checking presidents\u2019 names against an incomplete list of School of the Americas graduates, MintPress<\/i> was able to identify at least 16 foreign heads of state who were trained there, almost all of those from Latin America and the Caribbean. These include:<\/p>\n