Fort Benning, the infamous Georgia U.S. military base, is once again in the news, changing its name to Fort Moore, thereby ditching its Confederate name. Yet none of the media covering the rebranding – not The New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN, ABC, CBS News, USA Today nor The Hill – mentioned the most controversial aspect of the institution.
Across Latin America, the very name of Fort Benning is enough to strike terror into the hearts of millions, bringing back visions of massacres and genocides. This is because the fort is home to the School of the Americas (now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC), a shadowy academy where around 84,000 Latin American soldiers and police officers have been taught on the U.S. dime on how to kill, torture and how to stamp out political activists.
Thus, these units effectively serve as shock troops for the U.S. Empire, making their country safe for American multinationals to pillage. MintPress has found that no fewer than 16 School of the Americas graduates would go on to become heads of state in their country.
“The school is controversial partly because of its role in promoting US hegemony in Latin America, which undermines the sovereignty and independence of other countries,” James Jordan, national co-coordinator at Alliance for Global Justice, told MintPress, adding,
But even worse, it is how the school has promoted this: teaching methods of torture – even publishing torture manuals, counterintelligence, psyops, repression of political voices that don’t meet the approval of Washington DC. If one looks at cases of human rights abuses by the military throughout Latin America, the number of those responsible who were trained at the School of the Americas is simply staggering.”
Hellbound and Down 