Congress: Don’t Fall for It : Resist El Salvador’s exhortations not to reduce aid level

President Alfredo Cristiani of El Salvador is in Washington this week doing his best to persuade Congress not to scale back U.S. military aid to his government. It’s a familiar tune played in the past by other civilian leaders from that Central American country, and it’s even less persuasive today.

Cristiani is engaged in an intense lobbying effort aimed at persuading the Senate not to go along with the House, which recently voted to withhold 50% of the $85 million in military aid that the Bush Administration is proposing to send El Salvador in 1991. The House took that stand out of anger over a lack of progress in the Cristiani government’s investigation of last year’s murder of six Jesuit priests by government troops.

Lack of progress in the Jesuit murders is bad enough, but there has been even less progress in the peace talks Cristiani reopened with the guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, which has been fighting the government for 12 years. A rightist politician, Cristiani showed courage in starting up the negotiations again, and he has suffered for it politically. Not insignificantly, a key issue bogging the talks down is the FMLN demand that the size of El Salvador’s army be scaled back dramatically in exchange for a rebel agreement to disarm. But while that makes sense to many civilians in El Salvador, the officer corps will hear none of it.

The generals still cling to an outdated national security doctrine that defines the FMLN as part of an international Communist conspiracy that must be beaten in battle. But despite millions of dollars in U.S. aid since 1980, they have not only failed to defeat the FMLN, they also have also fallen short on promises to “professionalize” a corrupt and brutal army. That’s why the murder of the six priests is such a powerful symbol.

The sad fact of the matter is that the military still has too much political clout in El Salvador, and until the generals are brought down a few notches, the prospects of peace there will be dim. And that’s why Congress must send a firm, clear signal to the Salvadoran high command that U.S. taxpayers are tired of paying for an ugly and ultimately unwinnable war.