SOA: Past and Present

We are going to have a showing of the movie Romero on Monday, July 6th at 7:30 pm. I saw the movie several years ago and loved it. I've been meaning to watch it again so it's fresh in my mind for the upcoming book study on the School of the Americas.

Please drop on by and join me, we'll have refreshments and snacks, of course! Whether you attend the book study or not, you are certainly welcome.

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There is also something going on right now in the world that also relates directly to what our book study will be about. You may have noticed in the news that there was recently a military takeover of the government in Honduras.

At first, the story may seem rather ordinary: Another third world government has been overthrown. That's hardly even news, right? Well, it bears looking a bit further: The government that was overthrown was democratically elected. That's sad, but again, is that really news in that part of the world? Going even further, the man who led the uprising was trained in the USA by the US military.

While this is tragic, certainly the US can't be blamed if someone they train is a bad egg and goes off and does something terrible, right? Our government professes to support democratically-elected governments around the world. That was supposedly part of our rationale for entering Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, among other places.

Honduras is not an isolated incident, though. This article brings the story into a larger context. Literally dozens and dozens of US-trained and supported personnel have been involved in all sorts of takeovers, wars, abuses and atrocities all over Latin America for decades. Even worse, the constant state of chaos that is the result of all these atrocities keeps this part of the world dangerously impoverished and suffering.

So what is our government doing supporting people who are doing the opposite of what Americans value? Is our government simply mismanaging this, or is this intentional? Neither seems excusable, in my opinion. I don't know about you, but I think those are very good questions!

We'll be exploring these topics in the coming weeks, please join us!