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Contributors
Gordon
Cucullu- Contributor
Former Green
Beret lieutenant colonel, Gordon Cucullu is now an editorialist,
author and a popular speaker. Born into a military
family, he lived and served for more than thirteen years in East
Asia, including eight years in Korea. For his Special Forces
service in Vietnam he was awarded a Bronze Star, Vietnamese Cross
of Gallantry, and the Presidential Unit Commendation. After separation
from the Army, he worked on Korea and East Asian affairs at both
the Pentagon and Department of State as well as an executive
for General Electric in Korea. His first major non-fiction work,
Separated
at Birth: How North Korea became the Evil Twin, is
based in large part on his extensive experience in
Korea and East Asia as a governmental insider and businessman.
[website]
[go to Cucullu index]
 The
Real Salvadoran Option
Lessons for democracy in Iraq from El Salvador…
[Gordon Cucullu] 1/11/05
Take
an anonymous Pentagon leak from a ‘high level military
officer,’ add an appalling lack of knowledge of history,
and compound it with ignorance of special warfare tactics. This
process describes the article published by Newsweek breathlessly
revealing that a ‘desperate’ Defense Secretary Rumsfeld
is ‘considering’ employing the ‘Salvadoran
option’ to thwart the ‘growing quagmire’ of
the Iraq War. This terrible option, reports Newsweek, was used
effectively in the counter-guerrilla wars in El Salvador in the
early 1980s. It involves US special operations forces leading
indigenous ‘death squads’ to root out and kill or
capture enemy military and political leaders. In a backs-against-the-wall-with-all-guns-blazing
reporting style the article suggests that once exercised this
method might win the war but implies that the cost in innocent
life could be horrific. Stuff and nonsense.
Let’s
look at history first. Just what was going on in the early
1980s? The
Soviet Union was strong and expanding. Under
President Jimmy Carter the Russians invaded Afghanistan. Carter
punished them by canceling the 1980 Olympic Games, the one peaceful
thing we all did together. Carter then adroitly destabilized
two areas in the world: Iran and Nicaragua, and almost toppled
another friend, South Korea. The benefits of his policy in the
Persian Gulf began with the hostage crisis and persist to this
day. In Central America the communist Sandinistas, led by the
Ortega brothers, stepped into the void created by the toppling
of the Somoza regime. They immediately launched and accelerated
support for Cuban-inspired communist insurgencies in El Salvador,
Honduras, Guatemala, and Costa Rica. The Soviets installed a
dictator puppet in Grenada and began to construct airfields to
accept high performance military aircraft. The Ortegas discussed
acquisition of MiG fighter aircraft. El Salvador was run by an
increasingly harsh military dictatorship. Multiple, compounded,
failed foreign policy initiatives helped dump Carter.
After Ronald Reagan defeated Carter he announced a new, aggressive
policy in the region: we would assist these nations resist the
incursion of communism and help them achieve democratic status.
Such idealism was denigrated by the usual suspects, the left
and the media, as being hypocritical. How can you support brutal
dictators by pretending to export democracy, they asked. Plus,
these people have no history of democracy, how can you reasonably
expect them to understand it? Reagan knew that oppressed peoples
everywhere yearn to be free. He also realized that the US could
more effectively influence stable, secure countries than those
in which communism had triumphed and the democratic opposition
was eliminated, a sad condition that accompanies every communist
takeover. So the Reagan Administration drew the line in the sand
at El Salvador. We began to increase military assistance and
training, along with economic development and diplomatic initiatives
to encourage a transition to democracy.
It was slow
going at first. Recall that America still smarted from the
Vietnam
experience that had ended only in April 1975.
Congress was virulently anti-military and opposed any use of
power that might result in ‘another Vietnam,’ a fear
that has achieved mythic dimensions in the minds of liberals
and media that persists today. As a consequence American military
efforts in the region were micro-managed with antipathy and suspicion.
Due to an innocent remark by LTG Ernie Graves during Congressional
testimony, US military presence was limited to a scant 56 officers
and enlisted men. Funding to train and equip Salvadoran military
was pathetically small compared to the danger of expanding communism
at the American doorstep. Every penny of the monies available
was carefully weighed by US and Salvadoran planners to make certain
that the limited funds were spread as efficiently as possible.
The US side pushed training as a necessity, including a large
dose of training that focused on human rights, dealing with civilians,
and prisoner handling. Despite contrary accusations by hostile
media the quality of the training was designed to improve Salvadoran
Army relations with its populace and win them over from the guerrillas.
Over time it was remarkably successful. But at first the concept
was tough to sell.
For in El
Salvador a popular culture of violence compounded the severe
problems
that would be associated with any insurgency.
Salvadoran soldiers and guerrillas alike thought that the best
fate for an enemy was death. And if any innocents got in the
way, tough. As a result the peasant population was terrorized
by both sides. One of the institutions that drew the most criticism – justified
in my opinion – were the death squads sent out by the Salvadoran
Army. These notorious ad hoc units dressed in civilian clothes
and kidnapped, killed, and assassinated all those who they even
suspected supported the guerrillas. On the other side the FMLN
guerrillas also killed and kidnapped with impunity.
The poor
peasants were caught in between. American outrage with the
death squads
grew to the point that Vice President George
HW Bush flew secretly to San Salvador to meet with General Flores-Lima
and others in the junta. Behind closed doors Bush told them that
President Reagan was sickened by the death squads and would not
tolerate their continued operations. ‘Stop them now, and
guarantee this to me before I walk out of that door,’ Bush
was reported to have said, ‘or we will cease all support
for El Salvador immediately!’ When Flores-Lima protested
that Salvador was an anti-communist bulwark Bush dismissed that
out of hand. America decided to draw the line here. America can
choose to draw the line elsewhere. But America will not support
the death squads. period. Bush was hard and inflexible. The Salvadorans
agreed to his terms. The death squads were out of business permanantly.
Further convincing
the leaders that positive inducements not fear were best for
the country, the Salvadoran government benefited
from a surprising upsurge of popular support when the peasants
realized that the military was now on their side. Conversely,
the level of violence from the guerrillas spiked as the communists,
desperately aware that they were losing control, tried to intimidate
the people. Within months political parties formed, candidates
announced and campaigned, and genuinely free elections were held
under the stern gaze of international electoral monitors who
pronounced the elections fair. Voter turnout was amazing. Key
to success was that the army – now increasingly well trained
and staunchly on the side of the people - announced that it would
not influence the election but would devote all assets toward
safeguarding the electoral process.
Salvadoran
Army units surrounded polling places, guns pointed outward,
protecting
the peasants as they lined up to vote. Vowing
to disrupt the election, guerrillas attacked indiscriminately
with small arms fire, machine guns, and mortars. Innocent civilians – men,
women, and children – lay in the baking sun, face down
in the dirt while guerrillas tried to intimidate and frighten
them away from the polling places. Army protection was effective
and the communist attacks failed miserably. The motivation of
these people – poor, uneducated, and unsophisticated in
most cases in the mechanisms of democracy but acutely aware of
this golden chance for freedom – could not be suppressed
by mere gunfire. It was an honest, unassuming display of bravery
that awed combat veterans.
Democracy won the day in El Salvador, not some urban legend
of Special Forces-led death squads. In Salvador we saw a model
that works worldwide: Give ordinary people a chance to be free,
to chose representative leaders, and to control their own destiny
and they will gladly step up to the challenge regardless of personal
danger or discomfort. It worked in South Korea, El Salvador and
the Central America region. It worked in Grenada and Panama,
in the liberated states of Eastern Europe, in Afghanistan, and
most recently in Ukraine. And the model will work in short time
in Iraq. Democracy is the real Salvadoran Option. It is a gift
that we must steadfastly promote, defend, and share with the
world. tRO
In addition to his Asian credentials, Gordon was the security
assistance desk officer for El Salvador and Central America in
the Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1981-1984. Gordon’s
book Separated
at Birth: How North Korea became the Evil Twin became
the Evil Twin, is drawing good comments. Gordon is scheduled
to speak at the Flushing Library, Queens, NY on January
15 at 2 pm, public invited.
copyright
Gordon Cucullu 2005
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