Miami Herald opinion: Ending U.S. complicity in Argentina’s ‘dirty war’

[Judi Lynn]

March 21, 2016 7:29 PM

Ending U.S. complicity in Argentina’s ‘dirty war’

Highlights
Obama right to release documents behind U.S. support for military junta

Public should know about U.S. role in human-rights abuses

This is how a ‘strong, self-correcting democracy’ should work

BY ELISA MASSIMINO
HumanRightsFirst.org

On March 24, 1976, the Argentinian military detained President Martínez de Perón and seized control of the government. Two days later, at Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s weekly staff meeting, Assistant Secretary for Latin America William Rogers argued that the U.S. government should keep its distance from the military regime. “[W]e've got to expect a fair amount of repression, probably a good deal of blood,” he said.

But Kissinger rejected his counsel, and the United States quietly supported the junta’s “Dirty War,” a brutal campaign of arbitrary detention, torture, and assassination against students, trade unionists, and other opponents of the government. Thousands of people — perhaps as many as 30,000 — were killed or disappeared by the regime, which ruled until 1983. And “los desaparecidos” entered the human rights lexicon.

In light of that history, it’s no wonder that many human rights activists in Argentina are frustrated and angry that President Obama will visit on the 40th anniversary of the coup. But the controversy underscores the importance of the president’s decision to unseal documents related to the Dirty War. He reportedly plans to announce the decision during his visit.

The documents may reveal important facts about what happened to the military dictatorship’s victims, who was responsible for human rights abuses, and where survivors — including now-grown abducted children — may be now. For decades, the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, a group of grandmothers of the abducted children, and other human rights activists, have been trying to find out what happened to their children and grandchildren. Thanks to President Obama, crucial evidence may be forthcoming.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article67422812.html#storylink=cpy

[forest444]

1. That's all well and good.

But deliberately waiting to visit Argentina until a far-right government staffed with dictatorship sympathizers and accomplices (or sons of accomplices), from President Macri on down, takes office hardly shows a willingness or even a desire to "end U.S. complicity."

Especially given the White House's plans to arrive on the very anniversary of the coup itself - and greeted by a man (Macri) who believes "human rights are a scam."

If anything, it shows a tacit endorsement. That's certainly how many in Argentina interpret it.

President Obama can still turn this visit into an opportunity to show larcenous Latin fascists that the U.S. will no longer coddle them. It's all up to him now.

[Judi Lynn]

2. I wonder if he will use the opportunity to do it right.

The Nazis among us have been shrieking like banshees from his first day in office, and actually well before that, over every motion he makes, every word he utters.

He may be too beaten down to manage the right thing on the return of the Argentinian fascists.

We'd really like to think he would take the time left to him to make the most of it, and try to set things right, not right-wing.