Protesting the School of Assassins

Tim Chadwick, Robert Daniels, Louise Legun, Joe DeRaymond and Bernie Berg at 5th and Hamilton - photo by Judy Woodruff, 4-25-2008

On Friday, April 25, between 4 PM and 5:30 PM, a group of nine Lehigh Valley human rights activists gathered at the corner of 5th and Hamilton Street in front of the Federal Building, to protest the School of Assassins (SOA), now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute of Security Cooperation (WHISC). This is a terror and torture training school operated by the United States military on the Columbus, Georgia, military base Fort Benning with the decades-long bipartisan support of the US Congress.

The SOA is the reality of US foreign policy. It is Hidden in Plain Sight, a school whose sole purpose is to provide support for dictators, death squads, and military enforcement of economic exploitation, in the name of "democracy". Those of us gathered in front of the Vietnam Veterans’ monument at 5th and Hamilton are well aware of the connections between the policies of assassination and terror employed by the US in the Americas have been consciously exported to the Middle East by such policy makers as Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and John Negroponte. Here is an article that connects some of these dots, by this writer: http://www.counterpunch.org/deraymond01132005.html.

As we handed out flyers, held up our posters, and talked to passersby about the SOA and the use of terror and torture by our government, in our name, we noted that Art Landis of Perkasie is in prison for protesting the School of Assassins. Tim Chadwick of Bethlehem was participating in a three day fast sponsored by School of the Americas Watch, in solidarity with those in prison, and with those starving around the world as a food/fuel crisis constricts the bellies of the poor so that the first world can convert carbohydrates to diesel.

Recently, former Attorney General John Ashcroft was allowed to defend his disgraceful record as a supporter of torture, illegal wiretapping and rendition before a cheering crowd of Republican students at Lehigh University. The uncritical and admiring press reports of this event in the Morning Call and Express Times are a benchmark to how far the press has fallen in line with the attack on civil liberties sponsored by the Bush Administration and ratified by a spineless Congress that includes the "Three Blind Mice" - McCain, McClinton and McObama.

The SOA remains, a vicious and living testimony that the United States offers impunity to torturers and prison to those who protest torture. I have met three torture survivors through my association with the SOAW – Dianna Ortiz, who was tortured in Guatemala, with US personnel present; Hector Aristizibal of Colombia who has converted his courageous testimony about his torture and the reality of US sponsorship of torture policies into a moving drama that welds drama to protest to theater, and Carlos Mauricio who has toured the US to testify as to the torture policies encouraged by the US in El Salvador.

As food riots break out around the world, the US is pursuing a foreign policy of war and terror to enforce an economic hegemony from the Americas to the Middle East to Africa to Asia. We look forward to the release of Art Landis, and to the rejection of torture policies by the people of the United States of America. –Joe DeRaymond