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Beginning the
first week of June, the Senate is debating an "emergency" supplemental
budget bill to fight terrorism--and part of that White House
request should be rejected. President George W. Bush is asking
for a sharp increase in foreign military aid--including an
extra $1 billion for training programs and other forms of
military assistance--and he also wants congress to lift all
aid restrictions based on human rights concerns. The problem
is that fighting the enlarged war on terrorism the way the
Bush administration wants it done, a significant portion
of the $1 billion earmarked for new military training and
aid will go to many new allies with poor human rights records--thus
we run the risk of creating the terrorists of tomorrow.
Over the past
decade, military training has been one of the principal U.S.
means to interact with foreign governments. By the end of
the 1990s, U.S. military forces were training UP to 100,000
foreign soldiers from more than 150 countries each year,
in areas ranging from evasive driving and accounting to counterinsurgency
and interrogation techniques, to name a few.
Since September
11th, the Bush administration has announced plans to greatly
expand these programs. It is asking congress to increase
aid to countries such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Georgia,
Ethiopia, the Philippines, Colombia and Yemenmany of which
are run by corrupt and undemocratic regimes or are engaged
in internal or cross-border wars that have resulted in numerous
civilian casualties.
(Lora Lumpe is
a consultant on military and human rights issues and writes
for the Foreign Policy In Focus project (online at www.fpif.org).
Her new report, "U.S. Foreign Military Training: Global
Reach, Global Power," is available at www.fpif.org/papers/miltrain/.)
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