Newsday, NY
What began as an odd remark by Dick Cheney in the vice presidential debate has now become a pattern. Conservatives have repeatedly cited the Central American nation of El Salvador as a model for building democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Wracked by civil war in the 1980s, El Salvador has since made the transition to a stable democracy. Yet, the warped lessons that Bush administration hawks draw from the Reagan-era intervention in this country suggest a willful blindness to even the most murderous consequences of the United States' Cold War foreign policy. They give us reason to look critically again at the actions the White House is taking under the guise of promoting freedom.
During a mid-November visit to El Salvador, the only Latin American nation that currently has troops in the U.S. "coalition of the willing," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld praised the country's conservative government. He said El Salvador "understands well the human struggle for liberty and democracy."
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