First They Came For the Sunnis, But I Was American... 
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemöller
When I was a child attending Hebrew School in New York in the late 1960's, in addition to learning to read and write Hebrew, studying Jewish heritage and spiritual practices, and practicing the melodies of prayer in the Torah, we also learned a lot about the Holocaust.
Through films, photographs, and stories, each of us had etched in our minds the horrors of people being rounded up, taken away from their homes, brutalized, tortured, raped and killed.
Because our elders wanted us to remember, and never let things like that happen again, to ANYONE, despite the trauma that it might cause to children so young, we were exposed to atrocities that no child should even have to imagine.
That's why, when I read the newspapers this week, my skin crawls and my blood boils, and I wonder how we can sit idly by.
One student said "I wouldn't do anything. Those people probably did something and the police have to arrest them."
The Rabbi shook his head and said "Then we've learned nothing."
He went on to talk about the Holocaust.
This week in Iraq, armed (and Interior Ministry style uniformed) thugs wearing what looked like ski masks to cover their faces, pulled busses full of students over. As the students were taken off the bus, according to reports, the thugs told the Sunnis to go to one side, the Shiites to go to another. For me, this was just like the image of the Nazi officers in the death camps, going through the lines of Jews and pointing some to the left, and some to the right. Those who went in one direction were marched straight into the gas chambers, the others got to live a little longer, doing slave labor until their bodies were too weak to carry on.
When I discussed this with my life-partner this morning, he said that the Nazi comparison was not exactly right. "It's more like El Salvador," he said. Why? In Nazi Germany, the killers didn't wear ski masks or try to hide their identities in any way. In Iraq, the killers are wearing masks. "This is like the death squads in El Salvador" my partner continued, "in fact it feels so much like those death squads that I think the same people are involved."
Neither my partner nor I are consiracy theorists by any stretch, but, the tactics being carried out in Iraq, where people are disappeared and then found dead with bullet holes in their heads, do sound an awful lot like the tactics used in Central America during the 1980's.
In fact, a group of Salvadorans recently watching the news on TV with some friends, upon seeing pictures of and hearing the stories of what was happening in Iraq became visibly shaken, finally saying "It's exactly like El Salvador."
We've been told by the Bush Administration that we are training Iraqi forces so that they can "stand up" so our troops can "stand down." Is anyone monitoring what that training is teaching? Has Congress sent people to the training camps, for extended periods of time, to see exactly what these Iraqis are being taught? Could we be, once again, teaching the art of torture and assassination, as we did in Central America in the 1980's?
Given the players running our government these days, THOSE SAME players as in the 1980's, is it really a stretch of the imagination to think that they could once again be using the old School of the Americas training manuals, translated into Arabic?
People in Jewish communities (as well as countless other people of faith and good will) have done a terrific job of standing up and demanding action to stop the genocide in Darfur. The parallels between the Sudan and Germany were too strong to ignore. Today, though, Sunnis and Shiites seem to be trying to exterminate each other, and perhaps, the Bush Administration has actually taken sides on who should win.
Congress must act NOW to determine what US forces, contractors, and the CIA are teaching the Iraqis, which side(s) the Bush Administration is supporting and what that support looks like. Americans must act NOW to demand that the President explain what the hell we are doing in Iraq. How can we allow so many thousands of innocent people to be slaughtered? Our own troops are now being investigated for massacres in places like Haditha. People ARE being rounded up in broad daylight, and fingers are pointing left or right, and the flick of a finger determines life or death. This is an ongoing holocaust, happening before our eyes and UNDER OUR SUPERVISION.
The American people must act, now and demand answers and an end to the bloodshed. Once again, my Rabbi's words echo. If we do nothing, we've learned nothing.
Breaking News: Other People Have Already Written About This......
Thanks to the comments (below)(thank you 8ackgr0und N015e), I now understand that I'm not breaking any real NEWs here (the so-called 'Salvador option' news broke in January 2005). So, I thought it would be good to link to a few articles now that I know there are more out there. And DO read the article linked to in the kind comments below in the comments section. (Lesson to budding columnist.... Google the words "Salvador Iraq" before writing an article -- and now that I have, I notice that my PoliticalCortex entry is the third link):
Congressman Dennis Kucinich Demands Answers (April 2006)
The Salvadoran Option (Newsweek)
Cuban News on Colonel James Steele
National Review Column
KEYWORDS: Iraq, Holocaust, Jews, School of the Americas, Negroponte, Death Squads
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