A KILLING MACHINE

by Duane Shank 09-07-2011

Two long pieces this weekend described “one hell of a killing machine,” and “the dark matter … that orders the universe but can’t be seen.” One is the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center, including its drones and paramilitary branch; the other the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command. Together, they are “an expanding netherworld between intelligence and military operations.” And together, they are part of what another story calls an era of endless war.

With little accountability and almost no transparency, the U.S. has trained, armed, and authorized secret death squads; free to assassinate those who are considered terrorists or insurgents. They are responsible for an unknown number of deaths, but numbering in the thousands. And both are growing.

It is eerily reminiscent of the Phoenix Program, run by the CIA and U.S. special operations forces during the Vietnam War. That operation killed at least 26,000 suspected members of the National Liberation Front of Vietnam. Two decades later, a civil war in El Salvador between a military-controlled government and a combination of left-wing militias flared into the open. The U.S. actively backed the government with military aid, including troops trained by the U.S., some of whom were also involved in death squads. These secret assassination teams killed thousands of activists, including Archbishop Oscar Romero, three American nuns, and a religious lay worker, among many others.





And now we’re at it again. Striking in the dead of night — either by drones from the sky or masked men in black kicking down doors with guns blazing. We continue to operate under the assumption that we can kill our way to peace; that covert assassinations won’t come back to haunt us in a new generation of insurgents, out to avenge their anger. We forget the words of the prophet Hosea, “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” And, we forget the words of Jesus, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” We must discover that way to life, rather than continuing to bring death.

Duane Shank is senior policy advisor at Sojourners.