What's everyone's opinion on...

[E-Skeezy]

The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as The School of Americas?

Honestly, I thought most people considered this to be a terrible place/organization. But, a friend of mine said this evening(while some of my friends and I were planning to go to the vigil/protest in November) that he didn't agree with the protest. He said that even though some terrible terrible people have come from that training site, it has also produced a lot of good soldiers and protesting it would be the same as protesting Yale University for having George W. Bush as an alumnus.

Just wondering you fine people in the politics forum thought about it.

[IATA4224]

I've actually never heard of this.. What is it?

[boykosaurus]

A lot of crazy shit has come out of that place...and we've trained a lot of ruthless people there (especially the ones we've sent to Central America). However, the turnout of good soldiers over others that have committed horrible crimes is drastic. No place/person is perfect

[awakenarogue]

in theory, i think the idea of WHINSEC can be good, but i think that the way in which it is carried out is drastically misguided. in a statement by Rep Jim McGovern, Mass

June 21, 2007
The fact that charges of kidnapping, torture, murder, drug-trafficking and corruption are routinely dropped is a major PROBLEM with Latin American militaries – not a virtue.

Even more disturbing is how the WHINSEC responded to criticism.

It chose to build a fortress around itself, to make sure that no one in the public – no human rights organization, no foreign policy analyst – would be able to review the names of WHINSEC’s graduates and instructors.
i agree entirely with this. the idea of assisting latin american militaries is a good one, and the idea of us cooperation and guidance is a good one. training military personnel and simply immersing them in a military environment where oppression and human rights violations are rampant solves nothing.

As far as solving the problem, there is a bill introduced in the house by McGovern to suspend operations of WHINSEC and set up a review of the school operations and history:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.1707:
(http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:1:./temp/%7Ec110bsgWBq::)

[Love As Arson]

By all standards, it is a terrorist institution.

[awakenarogue]

I've actually never heard of this.. What is it?

A military training school begun around the time of WWII to train military personnel for american countries (mostly latin america, although occasionally there is the random canadian. The school began as the School of the Americas (located in Panama?) and was then moved to Fort Benning, GA. but because of controversy congress repealed legal authorization for the school in 2001. It was reopened as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) with some slight changes.

Info:
http://www.ciponline.org/facts/soa.htm
https://www.benning.army.mil/whinsec/

SOA Watch:
http://www.soaw.org/

[awakenarogue]

Bump because the protest at Ft Benning is this weekend.

Also, there is a petition to Obama to sign an executive order to close the institution: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/727/t/3823/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=1732

[saysmydoctor]

By all standards, it is a terrorist institution.
This.

[boykosaurus]

Who do we even train there now?

[awakenarogue]

The largest numbers of graduates in the past couple years have been from Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Peru, Ecuador, and Panama--there are students from a number of other countries though, depending on the year; about 700-1,000 annually.