[Peace-discuss] Rumsfeld in Latin America

[Morton K.Brussel]

[FYI: What the Bush junta would like to see in Latin America. mkb]

  Mainstream Media Miss Rumsfeld's "Dirty Wars" Talk

By Jim Lobe | December 1, 2004

If in the near future Latin America returns to the military 
dictatorships and “dirty wars” of its all-too-recent past, analysts may 
point to the a conference in late November in Quito of the hemisphere's 
defense ministers--and particularly Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld's 
role in it--as a milestone in that journey. If they did, however, their 
assessment would surely draw a blank among the readers of U.S. 
newspapers or viewers of its television. For the vast majority of them, 
the conference was the equivalent of the proverbial tree toppling 
unheard and unseen in some vast, unobserved forest.

While the major media were filled with speculation about Rumsfeld's 
future in President George W. Bush's second term, his contribution to 
the meeting was entirely ignored by the electronic media and major 
newspapers with just a handful of exceptions.

That was unfortunate because, in many ways, the Quito meeting confirmed 
an evolution in U.S. policy that has been underway since Bush declared 
his “war on terrorism” after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New 
York and the Pentagon. Indeed, the purpose of the gathering was to 
erect a “new architecture” for continental security in which the armed 
forces, in Washington's view, would play a central role.

  New Continental Security Architecture

  For almost two decades, the United States has urged Latin American 
militaries to move away from the Cold War “national-security” doctrines 
that resulted in so many abuses in the region. But last week Rumsfeld 
appeared to be preaching the virtues of reviving such an approach, 
perhaps under a new name, like “national sovereignty.”

Indeed, in remarks to his fellow defense ministers, Rumsfeld even 
suggested that, given the challenges posed by 21st-century threats, it 
was time to rethink the separation of the armed forces from the 
police--a major reform pursued by U.S. and Latin American human-rights 
organizations as a way of asserting civilian control over the military 
and reducing abuses.

“Since Sep. 11, 2001, we have had to conduct an essential 
re-examination of the relationships between our military and our law 
enforcement responsibilities in the U.S.,” asserted Rumsfeld, who never 
let the phrase “human rights” pass his lips. “The complex challenges of 
this new era and the asymmetric threats we face require that all 
elements of state and society work together.”

Indeed, the Pentagon chief included under the rubric of “enemies” faced 
by the region's armed forces a number of actors who normally would come 
under the jurisdiction of the civilian authorities. “Terrorists, drug 
traffickers, hostage takers, and criminal gangs form an anti-social 
combination that increasingly seeks to destabilize civil societies,” he 
declared, further blurring the line between the roles of the military 
and the police.

And during the drafting of the final communiqué, Rumsfeld's delegation 
resisted a Canadian move, backed by Brazil and Chile, to balance its 
anti-terrorism provisions with explicit references to international 
human rights and humanitarian law, according to Gaston Chillier, an 
Argentine lawyer from the Washington Office on Latin America who 
observed the conference.

“They were essentially saying, 'terrorism is the priority for the 
region, and international human rights law is not a requirement in 
combating terrorism’.” Chillier continued, “This is exactly the wrong 
message in a region where militaries used this philosophy during the 
dirty wars to commit gross human rights violations.”

In another update of the national-security doctrine of the 1960s and 
1970s, Rumsfeld also pushed for greater cooperation among the region's 
militaries, particularly in border regions where “enemies often find 
shelter.”

“Strengthening sovereignty, and ensuring effective sovereignty over our 
national territories must be a fundamental goal,” he said. “There is no 
one nation that can meet these challenges by itself; it is simply not 
going to be possible,” he added twice for emphasis.

  The Mass Media Miss Another Story

  Despite the obvious implications of Rumsfeld's remarks for Latin 
America and the future of U.S.-Latin American relations, however, the 
mainstream U.S. media did not see fit to give them--or the strong 
resistance to them on the part of most of the defense secretary's Latin 
American counterparts--much attention.

Although the major wire services, Associated Press and Reuters, carried 
some reports from Quito, only a few newspapers published them, usually 
in a much-abbreviated form. The conference was ignored by the 
Washington Post and noted in a relatively brief item in the New York 
Times that focused on Rumsfeld's contention that routes used by 
smugglers to move undocumented foreigners into the United States could 
be used as easily by terrorist organizations. Longer articles appeared 
only in The Miami Herald, the Denver Post, the AkronBeacon Journal, the 
San Jose Mercury News, and the Los Angeles Times. But in almost all of 
these accounts, Rumsfeld and senior officials are virtually the only 
quoted sources, according to a search of the Nexis-Lexis database.

Virtually the only instances when Latin American officials were quoted 
were in relation to the badly lagging deployment of troops to the 
Brazilian-led United Nations peacekeeping operation in Haiti and to the 
willingness of the region's military to cooperate more closely against 
drug trafficking. Latin American troops make up by far the largest 
component of the peacekeeping force in Haiti.

Of the newspapers that covered the conference, only the Miami Herald 
stressed Rumsfeld's recommendations on expanding the role of the 
military in dealing with the region's security problems and quoted Jose 
Pampurro, the Argentine defense minister, and his Brazilian 
counterpart, Jose Alencar, on the subject.

An article published in both the Denver and Akron newspapers was the 
only one that did not quote Rumsfeld at length and that stressed that 
Latin Americans saw the question of security in a much different light 
than the one cast by the Pentagon chief. Written by Denver Post 
correspondent Bruce Finley and entitled “Latin America Wary of Calls 
for Help in Anti-Terror Effort,” it was also the only one that cited 
non-governmental sources, including several people who had participated 
in a rally near the conference site to call attention to the plight of 
children in Latin America.

It also quoted retired Gen. Rene Vargas, the former head of Ecuador's 
military, as raising questions about U.S. intentions in his country and 
the disconnect between U.S. strategy and Latin American priorities. “In 
Latin America, there are no terrorists--only hunger and unemployment 
and delinquents who turn to crime,” he was quoted as saying. “What are 
we going to do, hit you with a banana?” The same article quoted 
Brazil's Alencar as calling for global disarmament, and insisting, “the 
cause of terrorism is not just fundamentalism, but misery and hunger.”

(Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus, online 
at www.fpif.org. He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service.)
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