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Issue: August 1996

SECRET WARS

by Steve Hassna

LISTEN UP, TROOPS!

Greetings from the old Drill Sgt.—as I said in my first column, history is very strange indeed. In this column, I would like to reflect on just how strange it is.

The poem at the beginning is the time frame I will speak to. All of this was brought about by none other than the U.S. Government, who else better to create contradictions for people to try and understand. This whole thing started with an article from the Washington Post titled "Secret War's Soldiers Honored Years Later, U.S. Recognizes Heroic Service in El Salvador." In May of this year, at Arlington National Cemetery, a service was held for twenty-one U.S. soldiers killed in combat in El Salvador's civil war, back in the bygone days of the 1980's. The kicker here is that they weren't supposed to be there. Yes, we had advisors but they weren't supposed to be in combat. Something to do with Congress saying so and the American people still smarting over Vietnam. Congress told our fearless leader, Herr Reagan, that fifty-five advisors was the most we could have; and above all, don't get them killed.

Well, Reagan and pals said Congress just doesn't understand and the American people are too stupid to get the big picture of stopping the Commies. So we just won't tell them and if anyone suspects, we will call them Hysterical, Leftist, Peacenik, Commie Dupes. It had worked before, why not now. Now it all comes out with awards to follow. I call this the, "I wasn't in combat in that country award". It would be interesting to know what the government told the families of the twenty-one killed. Probably killed in training accidents or car wrecks.

I wonder if I'll get an award for being in Cambodia from December `67 to the start of the Tet Offensive in January `68. Three battalions of the 101st Airborne fighting in a country that we weren't supposed to be in, two and one half years before the U.S. government admitted going there. Or maybe all those people in Laos who were never there, will they get one too?

But there's more to this then just final recognition of service. Let's talk about what that service was and take a look at the region as a whole. First off, we could have fifty-five advisors only, which could not train all the El Salvadorian military. So they tried to overlap them, which at times got the number to over 100. But still, that wasn't enough, so the Army brought Salvadoran troops to the U.S. Four battalions with as many as 700 troops, each were trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, which is the Army's main infantry school.

The real nasty side to this was the death squads. Remember them? At last count, I think it was about 70,000 civilians killed. Well, the death squads were a direct copy of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam. The Phoenix Program was run by MAC/SOG (Military Assistance Command/Special Operations Group). This little project killed thousands of South Vietnamese civilians suspected of not liking their government. The difference between Vietnam and El Salvador was that the U.S. personnel did the killing in Vietnam, and it was El Salvadorans killing their own people. Same procedure down the line, but the local people did the dirty work with the U.S. military out of the picture. Guess who trained and equipped these people? You got it, good old Uncle Sam. We were, after all, interfering in a civil war and didn't want to get our hands too dirty.

Let's move around a bit. As El Salvador shot it's way into the history books, things were looking bad for the U.S. down Nicaragua way. Those folks had just kicked out "our" dictator, one Anastasio Somoza, a good friend of the U.S. and United Fruit. The U.S. Marines were in Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933 to place in power the Somoza family. In 1979, that all ended and the Nicaraguans set about to rule themselves in 1981.

Reagan said we can't have that, and secretly started the Contras. They set up in Honduras and Costa Rica. Now how do you supply any Army that you don't admit exists in a country you're not in? First, you get your people there, this being U.S. troops. The U. S. Army set up joint training exercises with the Honduran Army. This was called Big Pine I and II. The U.S. National Guard would train down there for two weeks at a time; building roads near the border of Honduras and Nicaragua. These main roads and spur roads became the supply lines and base camps for the northern Contras (mainly ex-Somozan Nicaraguan National Guard). The same was done on the border with Costa Rica and Nicaragua. To be able to train troops like this, you need people there all the time. So under the guise of "training", the U.S. had up to 2,500 regular Army troops in Honduras at all times. How many operated with the Contras on cross border raids? We may never know.

And the CIA, who could forget those guys who were just doing their jobs and following orders, plus mercenaries from the U.S. proper. Two such mercenaries. were killed in a chopper crash in Nicaragua. Turns out they were from a group in Alabama called "The Civilian Assistance Command". These guys were cops from Alabama. Then there was Southern Air Transport. A direct off-shoot of Air America of Vietnam and Laos days. And last but not least, there was "I was only following orders, but I don't know who gave them, or where the money and guns came from (Ollie North)". And who says history can't be fun and confusing.

Well I guess that's it for now, so stay tuned and keep reading those papers for the next contradiction in what we all know and love as the American historical process.

See you around the base camp,

Drill Sgt. Hassna

Copyright Steve Hassna, 1997

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