Army School of the Americas

It’s unfortunate that your May 21 editorial, “Bury This Relic,” accepts assertions that smear the U.S. Army as fact and endorses closing what is actually a premier instrument for positive change in Latin America, the U.S. Army School of the Americas. For over 50 years, American soldiers at USARSA have worked with their foreign counterparts to improve the professionalism of militaries in the hemisphere, not teach criminal conduct as you implied.

Critics of the school totally ignore the local factors that contributed to human rights abuses throughout the region’s conflicted history, as well as the proper messages which have been part of USARSA’s curriculum from the beginning. They also reject the impact of new courses concentrating on 21st century challenges such as peacekeeping, civil-military operations and counter-narcotics cooperation, in order to portray the school as an anachronism.

The atrocities of the few were committed despite training provided, not because of it. The measure of success is not necessarily the number of graduates who, for whatever reason, failed their training, but in the number who did not. That impressive statistic reflects a glass that is far more than 99% full.

Our relations with Latin America are of special significance in the future, and the region’s militaries are institutions that will continue to influence their societies on questions of peace, progress and stability. Better to engage them as partners according to U.S. models of civil-military relations than to isolate them in the mistaken hope they will wither away.

COL. GLENN R. WEIDNER

Commandant, School of the

Americas, Ft. Banning, Ga.