Truth Commission Needed for the U.S.

["Jay Moore" <research@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Published on Saturday, December 23, 2000 in the Boston Globe

US Has Its Own Record of Atrocities

by James Ron and Charles T. Call

DURING SERBIA'S FORCED depopulation of Kosovo in 1999, Slobodan
Milosevic, the former Yugoslavian president, acknowledged that
irregular Serbian forces were committing excesses while fighting Kosovar
insurgents. He claimed, however, that these were mild when compared with US
war crimes in Vietnam.

Slobodan Milosevic was a deceptive autocrat responsible for the
deaths of thousands, but he had a point. Compared with the US record in
Vietnam, Serbia's Kosovo atrocities were far fewer.

Remember My Lai? In just a few hours, Lieutenant William Calley's men shot
or knifed more than 400 men, women, and children, raping and mutilating some
victims. Even that chilling episode, however, pales alongside US tactics in
the Vietnamese and Cambodian
countryside, where high explosives, napalm, and defoliant were the methods
of choice.

Serbian forces killed some 10,000 Kosovars, but in Southeast Asia the United
States and its allies slew 1 million, many of whom were civilians. More than
twice that number were wounded or forcibly
displaced.

Direct US involvement in war crimes continued even after the Vietnam
conflict. CIA operatives mined Nicaragua's main harbor in the 1980s, and
until the 1990s, US Army courses for Latin American soldiers included
torture. In the early 1990s, CIA agents created a
right-wing group in Haiti that killed hundreds of civilians.

Although most Americans barely recall those events, others elsewhere have
not forgotten. For them, the contemporary US fascination with human rights
seems empty and cynical. If the United States does not investigate its past
misdeeds, these suspicions will ring true.

In addition to directly participating in abuses, the United States also
covertly aided brutal authoritarians abroad. Just as Milosevic pulled the
strings during Bosnia's ethnic cleansing, the United
States secretly sponsored cruel allies to advance political goals.

Consider Chile, where CIA operatives helped overrow an elected
leftist leader in the early 1970s, creating the long nightmare of Pinochet's
rule. The Chilean judiciary is now investigating
Pinochet's crimes, but the CIA is only reluctantly opening its
files.

Or recall Iran, where US operatives in the 1950s helped depose an elected
government that was threatening Western oil profits. They then installed the
Shah, a dictator who relied on torture to
maintain control.

The same is true for Guatemala, where UN-backed investigators found that
government counterinsurgency forces killed 90 percent of an estimated
200,000 civil war victims.

President Clinton recently called the substantial, clandestine US role in
that war wrong, but did nothing to investigate those
responsible.

The US government offered widely accepted reasons for its behavior during
the Cold War years. It was fighting global communism, which to many seemed a
noble and worthwhile goal. Yet wouldn't men like Milosevic supply similarly
reasonable explanations?

Governments are skilled at justifying abusive policies, citing
overwhelming threats to national security. Milosevic defended the Serbian
nation, Pinochet battled subversives, and South African
whites were fighting communism. Although the rhetoric of
justification shifts with time, the realities of abuse remain
constant. When states use indiscriminate force to get their way, innocents
usually suffer.

In the post-Cold War environment there is increasing cause for
optimism.

Many countries, including Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa,
Ethiopia, Chad, El Salvador, Chile, Haiti, and Guatemala, have tried to
expose the truth about their past, often at great political cost.

Yet the United States still refuses to practice what it preaches. As supreme
Cold War victor, its representatives lecture others about human rights
without stopping to consider their own past crimes. For both moral and
political reasons, the United States should create a commission to
investigate its own involvement in Cold War misdeeds. The methods of an
official US ''truth commission'' should be
professional and nonpartisan in order to avoid narrow political
agendas.

Despite these precautions, a US inquiry would be painful and
divisive. Presidential fortunes might suffer, and congressional
careers could be hurt. Yet recall that these are only some of the powerful
risks run every day by politicians promoting truth-telling elsewhere, from
South Africa to Argentina. How long can the United States promote
accountability for others if it itself is unwilling to do the same?

James Ron is assistant professor of sociology and political science at Johns
Hopkins University. Charles T. Call is assistant professor for research at
the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

© Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company