COLUMN LEFT/ DON W. LEWIS : Atonement Before Peace in El Salvador : The U.S., having created the military monster, must repent and then demand a full purge.

There is a sad irony in the news from El Salvador these days. The U.N.-brokered peace accords have, at long last, made it possible for international forensic experts to document the long-shrouded truth about human-rights violations perpetrated by the Salvadoran military throughout the Reagan/Bush era. Yet there is a dawning dread on the part of American human-rights activists that one of the most egregious chapters in the annals of U.S. foreign policy will probably close as it began 12 years ago--without one single American official in either Administration being called to accountability for the atrocities committed in the name of furthering that policy.

Absent any cleareyed and honorable influence from Washington, it seems certain that in El Salvador, with its corrupt judiciary, ineffective national Legislature and hamstrung executive branch all tightly bound by military influence, lip service and token reform are about the best we can expect from this U.N. effort.

Considering that 4 billion American tax dollars were spent, at the behest of Presidents Reagan and Bush, to create the disaster that the experts are unearthing today, the United States is under a greater moral obligation to the Salvadoran people than any others in the world.

How well I remember the chilling feeling when a group of us, including Jesuit priests, accompanying a delivery of medical supplies to Chalatenango Province, found ourselves staring down the barrels of American-made automatic weapons in the hands of a steely eyed platoon leader and his troops from the infamous, U.S.-trained Atlacatl battalion. The soldier’s brand-new camouflage uniform still bore the U.S. logo on the left breast pocket. We were a long way from anywhere, carrying a forbidden load of medicine to a refugee resettlement camp in the name of Christ. The soldiers held us at gunpoint for about 30 minutes while they awaited orders from a higher-up. Two in our party were women, and I will never forget the animal-like looks in the eyes of these young men as they leered at our companions.

Having worn the American military uniform with youthful pride myself, I had great difficulty suppressing my sense of outrage as I found myself faced-off by an American-made and -supplied weapon, in the hands of a soldier whose unit was dubbed “elite” by U.S. Embassy advisers, and whose uniform bore the same logo that I had worn in service to a nation that stood for the exact opposite of what he was pledged to do. Finally, the word came down on their field radio to confiscate the medical supplies and let us go.

Our nationality was the only thing that saved us from the Atlacatl that day. If we had been Salvadorans, or a group of unaccompanied women, or Salvadoran priests, I am quite sure that we would have met the same fate as the 600 peasants massacred at the Sumpul River in 1980, or the 800 mostly women and children at El Mozote in 1982 (scene of the most recent forensic documentation under U.N. aegis). The list, of course, goes on and on: 75,000 victims of every form of death imaginable--infanticide, burial alive, torture, assassination, dismemberment. . . .

There is nothing “elite” about any of this, nor is there anything elite about any unit or member of the Salvadoran military, except perhaps the company they keep with the most infamous despots of human history. No, the kind of elitism that has been operative in El Salvador throughout the Reagan/Bush era is the sort that puts itself above the law, human or divine, and, when pressed, asserts the right of self-absolution. Sadly, this elite seems destined to go right on pardoning itself, unmindful that every new verification of an atrocity perpetrated by the military is destined to raise the mournful cries of those who survived, whose only defense against the nightmare memories is a dream that justice will be done.

A peace of sorts has been brokered in El Salvador, but can there be a lasting peace without true justice? Can there be forgiveness without confession and repentance? Can a nation be rebuilt on a foundation of lies, guilt and coverup?

The only way to attain a secure and lasting peace in El Salvador is for the U.S. government to admit its complicity in the military crimes committed against the Salvadoran people, apologize and demand that the Salvadoran military immediately purge itself and submit to full civilian control without further delay.

And we, as individual citizens should never, ever again allow the “elitists” to violate and oppress the innocent in our names, and with our money.