User talk:Howarthame

Why would the US Army teach foreign nationals to act in ways which are not accepted by mainstream United States Culture in this day and age here in the summer of the year 2012? It is a long story starting over 100 years ago, and is based on initial ideas and policies which just kept being extended and continued generation after generation I would imagine.

The initial dogma and theories of communism as outlined by Marx and Engels late in the period of time known as the Industrial Revolution could be an anchoring point for this discussion. For many hundreds of years leading up to this point, mankind existed through the sweat of his labor in producing food first through hunting and gathering, craftsmanship to make ones efforts go farther by perhaps making better baskets with which to use to gather, producing linen and other materials to insulate oneself against the elements thus lessening ones demands for calories, producing tools used in producing food such as plows for the fields or, swords, and arrows used for either stealing other peoples resources or defending the ones you posses.

Societal organization has been diverse though out the panorama of human development but certain trends and ideas have persisted and been prevalent. The trends have not well matched many of the sustained ideas which have come to be prevalent such as ideas of right and wrong, justice and injustice. Initially the trend was for the many to be forced to work to produce crops to support the entire group including an elite who held the reigns of power and made up the ruling classes, judges, and military. This elite able to live without spending all of its time and energy in the production of food, led to higher forms of society, increased the preservation of knowledge and the increase there of. Many opinions down through the generations may have been that this disparity between the poor farmers working the fields and the Elite including the ruler and the ruler’s offspring and extended family was an unjust situation. Just look as what has happened throughout history as recently as last year in Libya or now in Syria. An elite holds power and has a very different existence than the rest of the masses in that same society. Sometimes those masses get the idea to seize power and change things.

The people professing an ideology known as communism from the ideas written down by Marx and Engels had their first opportunity to try out their system early in the 20th century. They encountered a severe reaction from the rest of the world, including the United States, or rather the educated elite of the United States.

Communism though purporting to be a or the most just form of government still runs into the same problem as any other form of government these problems have been central and recurring throughout human civilization. Just as in any other government an elite holds power, makes decisions controls education, and makes up the military. Though education is expensive, things like group moral, Espirite, and natural ideas of right and wrong, justice and injustice are, though corruptible, much less expensive, and are in fact pervasive and common. After World War I two very similar forms of government developed and had a very significant impact globally, those being communist Russia, and the Nationalist Socialist government of Germany. Though professing opposite ideologies they both supported an elite government with ideals of extreme nationalism, and faith in their particular brand of dogma and leadership. Both governments perhaps eyeing the other as a threat mobilized and geared themselves up for essentially their ultimate struggle for existence.

Generally, people’s problems with communism and the dogmas thereof is wherein people who have something to lose, a means of earning a living, a shop, an inventory, an investment, a trade skill, productive land, or just inherited resources fear losing what they have, essentially their means of survival to the people or groups who wish to seize their resources for (re-distribution). People in this world lucky enough to receive an education since the time communism first started making a showing on this planet have been able to look at the actions and events surrounding the generation of communist governments and societies and form their own opinions about the subject. Today, like 1937 opinions are still very divided and often quite polarized, one-sided and extreme one way or the other. People have demonstrated their willingness to take up arms and kill their brother or their neighbor taking sides on this subject. The Spanish civil war is an excellent example of this.

I believe that though United States citizens fought on the side of the communists in the Abraham Lincoln brigade during that struggle the issue was by no means clearly understood and decided one way or the other in the hearts and minds of the people of mainstream United States, and though change has brought about the fall from power of the Franco regime, it is a fact that the regime had substantial supporters both in Spain as well as outside to hold on to power for many years. People, in order to survive have to have something, and people with something are, or at least have been just plain frightened of communism.

Societies have competed and succeeded in the competition for survival by supporting an elite, by division of labor, by societal forces such as plain economics wherein if you do not pay your rent you go out on the street, or military rules and codes of conduct where one gets in line and goes along with the party line. Though I believe God, and the qualities naturally instilled in us by this all-powerful creator being like love, justice, as well as simple ideas of right and wrong in any given situation have always been present in all of mankind, I do not necessarily believe these qualities have always been manifest forefront in the actions of all members of mankind throughout history. Stronger influences like “the party line”, simple greed, or outright ugly corruption have made human actions veer from the course directed by the human conscience, to which judges and priest have held all of us to be accountable since the earliest time in our history wherein laws and rules dictated by an elite onto the rest of society have existed.

The thing is about these laws and rules though sometimes they have been corrupt and in just, the ones that survive are the ones which we the common people believe in and accept deep down in our hearts to be true and just.

Now back to the subject at hand, the disparity between some of the teachings at the School of the Americas, by the United States Army and the above-board perceived values of justice, and pervasive Christian as well as other faiths present in the United States who share some of our ideas and values. Clearly the teachings in the schools, churches and courts of this country do not condone or encourage many of the teachings purported, or shall I just say teachings taught by that school, but the United States Army, and the United States Central Intelligence Agency.

Looking at the government of Fidel Castro, the Cuban Revolution as well as the pro-communist group’s active in the Americas since World War I, I believe a significant segment of the educated elite in this country especially the members with the most interests in those regions have looked at the threat of communism as out and out bloody, war, murder! No one can deny the power money has whether you have it or not to affect the quality of one’s life, perhaps life it’ self. (I say perhaps only because of my over-riding and pervasive Christian faith.) Though the Abraham Lincoln Brigade fought with the international Brigades and today mainstream media portrays the Republicans as the “good-guys” and the Franco fascist as the “bad-guys”, things have not been at all that clear.

First off, of all of the Americans who lived during these times how many of them had a good education, and could even understand what was going on concerning these subjects? How many of us today think they really understand these subjects? Probably not nearly enough people clearly understood these subjects enough for a clear consensus type opinion to be generated. If there was a clear one, it must be in favor of the fascist, as they were the ones who came out on top. How could one really have a clear understanding of communism? I imagine one educated persons opinion might be very different from an others or perhaps from an uneducated person who actually experienced a redistribution of wealth and resources; someone who perhaps lost his means of survival, his family farm as was experienced by millions of farmers in Russia, as well as farm and plantation owners in Cuba.

Perhaps the threat of bloody red communism, either perceived or real along with anti-communist trends in elite American and United States society lead to what I perceive to be a disparity between socially accepted norms of mainstream middle class United States society and what was taught or is being taught by the School of the Americas. The subjects of disparity such as torture and murder have been put aside in the past when decision makers reasoned it was in the best interests of their group as a whole. One such example of this is the saturation or carpet bombing of Japan and Nazi Germany during World War II. The decision makers having an understanding of the actions taken by the elite of Nazi Germany against her victims sequestering resources, means of survival, extracting slave labor, etc. as well as the Nazi methods of warfare led the decision makers to put away old ideas of warfare, and hold the population supporting such a regime accountable, not only destroying factories supporting a war effort, but also targeting the civilian workers, their homes, shelters, and means of survival in such an extreme struggle. If the communist threat facing an elite in the Americas included threats like assassination kidnapping, and sabotage often times the science of war includes meeting such forces or threats with similar such forces.

Also, internal policy in the United States Army may have allowed such teaching to continue due to internal and external factors such as entering into the cold war era with the Soviet Union after emerging victorious from a Second World War Though perhaps members of the United States Army did not believe in or wish to support some or many of the teachings taught in the School of the Americas it was one thing to teach such amoral ideas and yet another thing to actually commit such acts and activities. Though Christian beliefs may have been present in many of the United States Army individuals involved with the School of the Americas the economic rewards of going with, and consequences of going against the prevailing flow of policy would have made a foremost factor in dictating ones actions.

I personally believe that assassination, death squads, and many other examples of lawlessness directed at guerrilla or otherwise perceived threats described to have been taught through the United States Army School of the Americas was or is wrong, and that the United States owes its existence and well being not to its strengths in the black arts of warfare but to the good faith and grace bestowed on it by the All-Mighty. I believe human policy makers in this country as well as men in all countries have made mistakes, and it is our responsibility as citizens of this county to correct and remedy errors or mistakes when found or detected. We should be directed as dictated by our conscience and in this day and age be much more careful about doctrine which we allow ourselves to be associated with. Rather than allowing for circumstances of misunderstanding to exist and be generated between ourselves and any other peoples with whom we share this planet, we should be above board and forthcoming with all of our policies, being clearly guided by our own consciences, rather than telling people what they want to hear knowing that they are accountable to their own conscience. Perhaps if the United States clearly distanced itself from clearly amoral policy our nation would not attract the hatred of so many groups who use ideas like justice, law, and God-given or perceived spiritual ideas in defining who they love and who they hate.