Washingtons Favorite Literal War Criminal Isnt Done in Venezuela
Elliott Abrams talks to reporters after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
announced Abrams would handle U.S. policy toward Venezuela.(Manuel Balce
Ceneta/AP)
On Dec. 10, 1981, as the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion arrived at the
village of El Mozote in El Salvador to slaughter nearly 1,000 civilians,
including children, President Ronald Reagan posed for a photo with Elliott
Abrams and his parents, wife and son in honor of Human Rights Day. Then the
U.S. assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs,
Abrams was distinguished in Washington as an expert at lying in the name of
freedom.
At the United Nations on Saturday, Jorge Arreaza, the Venezuelan
representative, called the U.S. the vanguard of the coup détat when Juan
Guaidó declared himself interim president with the support of the United
States. Newly appointed by the State Department as the head of the efforts
to restore democracy in Venezuela, Abrams responded by criticizing
President Nicolás Maduro: Democracy never needs to be imposed. It is
tyranny that needs to be imposed. At least 44 people have been killed by
security forces in the past week, according to activists. Abrams was
previously appointed to be deputy secretary of state, but Trump nixed the
idea because Abrams wrote a negative piece about Trump in 2016 titled When
You Cant Stand Your Candidate.
Now, Abrams stands poised to revisit a playbook of distortion that has only
grown in the 30 years since he left the State Department. The 70-year-old
convicted war criminal has an extensive record of lies and policy ideas that
prioritize secret U.S. military involvement, particularly in Latin America.
In 2002, as senior director of the National Security Council in the George
W. Bush White House, Abrams encouraged an attempted coup in Venezuela
against then-President Hugo Chávez.
After the massacre at El Mozote, Abrams went to great lengths to convince a
Senate Committee in February 1982 that reports were not credibledespite
photos of the dead and eyewitness testimony. He argued that the front-page
stories in The New York Times and The Washington Post, written by U.S.
journalists guided by Salvadoran rebels, were propaganda. It appears to be
an incident that is at least being significantly misused, at the very best,
by the guerrillas, Abrams said.
In 1991, Abrams pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts for lying to
Congress about using money from weapons sales to Iran to fund the Contra
rebels in Nicaragua. Always insisting on his innocence, he called the legal
proceedings Kafkaesque and abysmally stupid. Abrams was sentenced to two
years of probation and 100 community service hours, only to be pardoned by
President George H.W. Bush a year later.
Its hard to quantify the extent of the destruction that the U.S. has
facilitated in Latin America. While El Mozote is considered the worst
massacre in Latin American history, it is hardly the only time Abrams
covered for death squads. In Honduras from 1981-85, the CIA-trained
Battalion 3-16 tortured and murdered activists, students and suspected
guerrillas.
Disappearing peoplemurdering people, was not the policy of the United
States. Nor was it our policy to avert our eyes, Abrams later said to
defend the countrys intervention.
In 1981-83, the U.S. provided military aid to Guatemala as the de facto
president, Efrain Rios Montt, carried out a genocide against the indigenous
Ixil Mayan people. Rios Montt, who died last year, was convicted of genocide
and crimes against humanity and sentenced to 80 years in prison. But it was
Abrams who argued that lifting an embargo on military aid to Guatemala would
help: The amount of killing of innocent civilians is being reduced step by
step, he said.
Investigative journalist Allan Nairn, who testified in the trial, said
Abrams should be held accountable:
There would be hundreds of U.S. officials who were complicit in this and
should be subpoenaed, called before a grand jury and subjected to
indictmentincluding Elliott Abrams. And the U.S. should be ready to
extradite them to Guatemala to face punishment, if the Guatemalan
authorities are able to proceed with this.
Naomi LaChance
Blogger / Editorial Assistant
Naomi LaChance has written for local newspapers such as the Berkshire Eagle
and the Poughkeepsie Journal as well as national outlets including NPR, the
Intercept, TYT Network and the Huffington Post. Her
Naomi LaChance
#congress #donald trump #elliott abrams #latin america #politics #south
america #