Soldiers at school

The Ministry of Defense hasn't been looking all that well lately, with what military-supervised airplanes being always late and/or missing each other by inches, and Minister Nilda Garré unsuccessfully trying to bend reality with her mind to negate the problem... but here's a good one for her. Also late, but you can't have everything. The MoD is changing the curricula of military education, and more: not only will there be humanistic subjects, but also new teachers and instructors coming from (civilian) universities. The pupils will learn about human rights, international law and Latin American integration, as well as a more current version of Argentine history.

If this doesn't make many a dead general spin in his grave (deservedly), I don't know what will. The notion of human rights has never been popular with any military force, ever, anywhere, but in Argentina just speaking aloud in favour of human rights has literally taken people to the bottom of the sea. Latin American integration, too, sounds positively misplaced in this context, where the usual teaching has been patriotism = nationalism = xenophobia... no matter how much our national heroes supported such an integration; today that sounds dangerously close to the "Bolivarian alternative" sponsored by Hugo Chávez or, if we're thinking of the religious side, the typical discourse of those irresponsible lefties of the Liberation Theology movement, which our most Catholic generals have always abhorred and our Holy (and Conservative) Father has so rightly condemned.

Above: The head of the future generation
of Argentine military instructors.

A few months ago, in one of those K-style spasmic bursts of decission-making that we've come to love and dread, there was a government idea of closing down all the military lyceums, which are colleges that give military instruction along with the common curricula and produce reserve officers. The plan was scrapped, and they came up with this, more sensible and less drastic measure, which will be implemented starting in August.

Thus far, the main report in La Nación, and a good one it was. Yet if you were starting to wonder whatever happened to the venerable paper's hypocritically ambiguous pro-dictatorship slant, a sub-article linked from this one will clear your doubts. It's called "A fractured ministry", it's written by María Elena Polack, and it comments on the internal conflicts of the MoD, where Minister Garré is (allegedly) trying to solve the structural problems of the military while the human rights department (the one in charge of the education curricula) is actually planning on "dismantling the very heart of the spirit of military education" by selecting instructors (committed to human rights, one guesses) that will teach the future officers, instead of letting the military themselves transmit the "values" they've been receiving from the previous generations.

Above: Benevolent dictator Rafael Videla speaks
about the moral value of sports (and how you
mustn't pay other teams to lose in the World Cup).

The rhetorical question near the end of the article cannot pass as innocuous to anyone with a mild grasp of Argentine political discourse: "Has anybody measured the impact of re-introducing in the military quarters the political debate that has caused so many pains for the country?". To my knowledge, the military have never debated whether violating the Constitution they swore to defend, start a programme of ideologically-motivated extermination of dissidence and state terrorism, and plunder the country's coffers for personal gain, was right or wrong or even justifiable; they've only made up excuses for not cleansing their own ranks in time. Moreover, this debate is not political, in the sense that it's not a matter of whose politics is popular or what politicians want — it's an ethical debate (what do we want our soldiers to believe in?) and it's a debate about justice (who deserves to be punished for the organized criminal group that called itself a government back in 1976?) and many other things.

The "forgive and forget" camp, the supporters of "reconciliation", have always been the same people: the right (not really the extreme right), the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, and the dictators and their accomplices; claiming that this uncomfortable debate is a pain for the country is like saying that speaking of cancer surgery is a pain for the patient... or, we can infer, that ignoring the cancer is actually better than removing it.

As I said before about Pinochet...

... good grief, old man!

Everybody's writing about the death of Augusto Pinochet, so I can only add a few things of my own, nothing especially original. Pinochet, in short, was the following (in rough order):

• a submissive soldier and a mediocre but obedient officer (that's how he earned the trust of his superiors and climbed up the hierarchy)
  
• a traitor of his lawful commander, president Salvador Allende, who appointed him Commander in Chief of the Army
  
• a traitor of his country, which he promised freedom and gave political terror and enduring economic inequality, by allying with the CIA and delivering Chile to the neoliberal fundamentalism of the Chicago Boys
  
• a traitor of his superior, general Carlos Prats, who recommended him to Allende, and whom Pinochet had killed in Buenos Aires
• a murderer, directly and by proxy, of thousands of his compatriots
  
• a torturer of tens of thousands
• a pioneer in the road that would lead to Argentina's Dirty War and other dictatorships in our poor Latin America
  
• a thief, to the point that even today what he stole is resurfacing by bits
• a scheming old son of a bitch, who gave himself political immunity after the end of his rule, and feigned illness and senility when it was removed, every time he was about to be investigated by justice
• a dreadful shadow looming over Chile, even as he's about to become ashes, who'll probably divide his country for generations

As appropriate to such a monster, the government of Chile didn't give him a state funeral; but president Michelle Bachelet, who was herself tortured and had her father killed by the dictatorship, consented to a military funeral with honours, as if a commander that rebels against his legitimate ruler and turns the military into a despicable band of murderers deserves any honour. Bachelet has also said that Chile must look for reconciliation and unity. Reconciliation with violent fascists? With supporters of ideological persecution, state terrorism, illegal detentions, suppression of liberties? With people who were for submission, censorship, forced exile? Politics is politics, but how can it be? The military funeral of Pinochet was marked by a defense of the coup d'état given by her own daughter, with the applause of several thousand attendants including military personnel, and even three young supporters of Pinochet giving his coffin the Nazi salutation.

President Bachelet's lack of commitment showed that she is (like the Scripture says) neither hot nor cold, and if God existed, It would certainly spit her out of Its mouth. You can't have your cake and eat it. For all the hysterical and confrontational attitude of the Argentine government on every issue, with regards to our last dictatorship we've at least been shown a morally and politically clear position: if you were there with the murderers, and if you're here now still with them, you don't have an excuse, you don't deserve any honours, and you won't receive any sort of forgiveness. Chile might come to this in a few years, maybe, but today's opportunity is already lost.