America's Debate > The El Salvador Option

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nivekelly

Jan 10 2005, 04:35 AM

Is this strategy one that the US should pursue?
I am no military expert, yet, I do believe that if we hunt down the insurgents and kill them it will only be positive for the coalition effort. I do not see what negatives could come out of killing the insurgents and their enablers.

Does it have any chance of succeeding?
Again I am no military expert but I do believe this has a valid chance of suceeding. This is because if you kill their leaders and those believed responsible for committing acts of crime, then the crime shall severely decrease or go away.

According to the Article Provided

QUOTE

...one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions.

Another positive I see from doing this is the advising, supporting and training of Iraqi squads. It would be very good if the elite special forces would train the Iraqis to become a more capable military force in fighting the insurgents in their land.

Ultimatejoe

Jan 10 2005, 06:27 AM

I don't suppose the killing of thousands of innocent civilians would count as a "negative" in your estimation... because that was a direct result of the El Salvador policy when it was first tried.

QUOTE

In the 1970s discontent with societal inequalities, a poor economy, and the repressive measures of dictatorship led to civil war between the government, controlled by the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), and leftist antigovernment guerrilla units, whose leading group was the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). The U.S. intervened on the side of the military, despite its scores of human rights violations. Between 1979 and 1981, about 30,000 people were killed by right-wing death squads backed by the military.

These death squad were populated by graduates of the School of the Americas, by the way, and were originally created to engage in the sort of work that is being proposed for Iraq. I find it incredibly disturbing that people have so quickly forgotten that the El Salvador policy was an abject failure in EVERY measure except in repressing the rights of political activists in that country.

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