Richard Cohen (Nyt) On Dirty War Legacy

[ajoknoblauch]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/11/opinion/left-hand-among-bones.html?ref=opinion

 

[Montauk_Project]

Many Argentines find the term "dirty war" to be offensive as "war" often means a fight between two sides. They prefer to call it dictatorship, genocide, or civil-military dictatorship (to acknowledge the role that civilians and businesses played in the dictatorship, like car factories having torture centers, robbery of babies, etc).

In English this term is used a lot and is not meant to be offensive, but I have seen people get really upset here when it is used.

 

[Matiasba]

Many Argentines find the term "dirty war" to be offensive as "war" often means a fight between two sides. They prefer to call it dictatorship, genocide, or civil-military dictatorship (to acknowledge the role that civilians and businesses played in the dictatorship, like car factories having torture centers, robbery of babies, etc).

In English this term is used a lot and is not meant to be offensive, but I have seen people get really upset here when it is used.

Even talking in the miitary field, you just cant compare.

On one side, the guerrilla, upper middle class students without training, armed only with short guns... they were, being generous, 5 thousands.

On the other side, the army, the air force, the marine, trained in the school of the americas, with a life career, with a trajectory as militars, with sophisticated weapons, tanks, planes, and the most important, the INTELLIGENCE, to kidnap and eliminate every one who thinks lefty, has long hair, study humanitarian carrers or uses miniskirt, in the case of the girls.
Everything remotely related to peronism or the left in general was in fact a matter of prosecution.

Plus, the arrogance of being government, of having all the power and more, included the management of argentine taxes money. The worst government ever, that of course, as every government ever existed, it did govern for somebody. The thing is that that somebody, that people benefitted, were a very tiny minority, that could not access to political power but by a coup, violating the constitution, and then, once they arrived there, of course, and this is very important cause it remains till today, implement an economic plan, the same plan implemented in the 90s after the hyperinflation (provocated by this sector), entirely prepared by the US (and by that I mean its corporations) and the concentrated capital sector of this country. That plan, that lots of forum members here would like. That plan, that exploded in 2001 provocating the worst crisis ever this country lived, with +54% under the poverty line.

 

[Montauk_Project]

@Matiasba You gave a much better explanation that I could, and one that was lacking in the article: the economic consecuences and also a detailed account of how the US was involved (as well as the French government, there is a great documentary about this) with the School of the Americas, CIA ops, loaning of petrol dollars to the dictatorship.

 

[mulderfox]

of course there was a power difference in between the 2. it would be called regular war if there wasn`t!.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

of course there was a power difference in between the 2. it would be called regular war if there wasn`t!.

There was indeed a great imbalance of power, and the Argentine "insurgents" (or whatever you want to call them) were, for the most part, naive believers in a fantasy conflict that would overthrow a corrupt state. Some of those who survived now support that same corrupt state, or are even participants in it.

Some of the victims, of course, had nothing whatsoever to do with the conflict.

 

[Jaredberryman]

My father-in-law had a friend that was invited to some anti-government meeting. Later, the friend disappeared. He could have very well been kidnapped and killed himself just for being associated with his friend. He had nothing to do with any of it but was afraid for his life.

Not down far the block, a neighbor's house was bombed. I can't imagine what it was like to live in that time in this country. It must have been nerve-racking. Maybe for some it wasn't so bad.

I know that a U.S. friend of mine that lived here during the 80s had his kids beat up at school at the onset of the Malvinas war. I am glad those times are over in this country, and I hope they never return.