Pubdate: Thu, 05 Jul 2001
Source: Guardian Weekly, The (UK)
Copyright: Guardian Publications 2001
Contact:  http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/GWeekly/front/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/633
Author: Julian Borger

COLD WARRIORS ON PARADE AS BUSH PUTS CLOCK BACK IN LATIN AMERICA

President George Bush speaks some Spanish. His accent is as broad as 
Texas and his grasp of vocabulary rarely stretches to complete 
sentences, but his country's neighbours to the south still appreciate 
the effort.

For Latin American leaders, the new president has demonstrated a 
lively interest and even a smattering of knowledge about the region, 
which came as a relief after eight years of occasional glances from 
Bill Clinton.

But for those with concerns about human rights - and memories long 
enough to recall the last time the United States was deeply involved 
in the affairs of the rest of the continent - the new-found interest 
is cause for some anxiety.

That anxiety has deepened many times over as the new administration 
has sought to rehabilitate old hands from the Ronald Reagan era 
responsible for its discredited, ideologically driven policy in 
Central America.

Those selected for prime jobs include key figures from the 
Iran-Contra scandal, one of the most embarrassing of recent US 
entanglements, and a string of former Reagan operatives whose job it 
was to bolster rightwing authoritarian regimes in the region while 
helping to cover up their bloody excesses. The poster boy of this 
trend is Elliott Abrams, an Iran-Contra veteran who pleaded guilty to 
two misdemeanour charges of withholding information from Congress 
about the plot to sell arms to the Iranian government to raise funds 
for the rightwing Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

Abrams was pardoned in 1992 by George Bush (the elder), whose son has 
just gone one step further. Abrams has now been appointed director of 
the National Security Council's office for democracy, human rights 
and international operations.

The job title is something of a sick joke among human rights 
activists in Central America. As assistant secretary of state for 
Latin America under Reagan, Abrams stood out for his glib denials of 
atrocities carried out by US allies, such as the 1982 massacre of 
civilians in a village called El Mozote in El Salvador by the 
country's US-backed army.

In 1986 he misled Congress about the US government's role in 
supplying the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, and his own piece of 
improvised fundraising -- a trip in disguise to London to solicit a 
$10 million contribution from the Sultan of Brunei.

Abrams is only one of the dirty war veterans to find a welcome in the 
Bush administration. The nominee for assistant secretary of state for 
inter-American affairs, Otto Reich, ran something called the Office 
for Public Diplomacy under Reagan, running a "white propaganda" 
operation, placing positive pieces about the Contras in US papers.

A comptroller-general report at the time concluded that Reich's 
office was "engaged in prohibited, covert propaganda activities 
designed to influence the media and the public".

Meanwhile Mr Bush's candidate to be his ambassador at the United 
Nations is John Negroponte, who also had a bit-part in the 
Iran-Contra affair. As ambassador to Honduras in the first half of 
the 1980s Negroponte filtered out reports of atrocities carried out 
by the local armed forces so as not to jeopardise the country's role 
as a Contra base.

Negroponte, and more probably Reich, could be blocked by the new 
Democratic majority in the Senate. Abrams's White House appointment, 
however, required no congressional confirmation.

Like Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, all these men are old 
cold warriors plucked from obscurity to make policy in a post-cold 
war world. Their selection says a lot about the administration in 
which they have been asked to serve.

First, they are a political pay-off to rightwing Cuban groups in 
Florida that helped Bush to win that crucial, disputed state. Reich 
is a Cuban exile himself and, along with Roger Noriega, the nominee 
to become US representative to the Organisation of American States, 
all are fervent supporters of the Helms-Burton embargo on Cuba.

Second, they reflect the Bush II administration as an ideological 
restoration, not so much of Bush I, but of the Reagan court. Simply 
having served in the conservatives' version of Camelot is seen as 
qualification enough to serve again today.

The ascent of these throwback figures reflects a nostalgia for the 
certainties of the Reagan era, when the world was more neatly divided 
into friends and enemies, and Central America in particular was 
categorised along those simple lines. There is no succour for those 
perceived as being on the wrong side of the line, and no offence 
against human rights too egregious for those friends on the right 
side. It is a policy of choosing sides and then shutting eyes.

This does not bode well for anyone hoping for the US to help find 
constructive solutions to intractable problems in Latin America, 
where poverty and entrenched social systems are more likely to be at 
the root of the problems than the various militant groups roaming the 
mountains and jungles. In this respect the Bush team is ideally 
suited to pursuing a policy inherited from the Clinton administration 
that emphasises a military over a socio-economic approach to Latin 
American woes - Plan Colombia.

The plan, earmarked for $1.3bn in US funds, pays lip service to 
providing support to Colombian farmers as an alternative to growing 
drugs, but on the ground the troops and crop-sprayers have arrived 
long ahead of the agricultural extension workers. In its 
implementation, the plan also lumps drug lords, leftwing guerrillas 
and their local supporters together as one amorphous enemy, while 
providing cover for rightwing paramilitaries to commit atrocities 
against civilians in pursuit of their own agenda.

All this is, of course, familiar to those who survived Reagan's 
policies in the region. It looks as if very little has been learnt 
from all the bloodshed and brutality that came from using Latin 
America as a battleground for proxy struggles. The transformation of 
Colombia's tragedy into a military crusade is a means of imposing 
cold war thinking on a complex and troublesome part of the world. And 
the new president has just the right men for the job.
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MAP posted-by: Kirk