ICE: Our Own Godless, Lawless Death Squads?
With the callous murder of Renee Good, and the immoral attempt to justify it, ICE proved itself to be more than a state-funded tool for lawlessness, fear, and intimidation. Clearly, it’s also been empowered to kill with impunity.
The horror and sadness of witnessing this brutal escalation takes me back to the notorious death squads that operated throughout Latin America during the latter part of the 20th century. We now know those death squads were funded by US tax dollars. We also know their leaders were trained on U.S. soil at the School of the Americas— since renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. This is a U.S. military training facility located at Fort Benning, Georgia.
In this 18 minute video narrated by Susan Sarandon, the dark reality of our nation’s complicity and intentionality in subverting democracy throughout Central and Latin America comes to light. This history is now repeating itself, but this time it’s not just south of our border. It’s within.
Between the ages of 5 and 20, I lived in Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, and Guatemala. When I see ICE agents with their masks, I can’t help but feel I’m living once more in a nation run by strongmen who are also criminals. It’s crushing to see this happen to any population, but it’s even more heartbreaking to accept that these crimes, the tens of thousands of men, women, and children who died by death squads, are on us. And, now, it’s beginning to happen to us.
God is not a part of this. God does not “let” this stuff happen. God is love. God commands us not to kill. Stopping state-sanctioned murder is up to the rest of us who still believe in God.
The full video below has introductory and closing commentary, but I have advanced the video to where the documentary School of Assassins begins. It received an Academy Award nomination for best documentary in 1995.
Sanatana
I'm glad you wrote about his horrible murder. I am sickened. I don't know if anything is being done about holding the killer accountable. And the lies coming out of the White House... It's unbelievable. The footage is out there for everyone to watch. That poor woman. My heart aches.
Evangel
Sadly, we're going to see more of them. Trump wants full public rebellion so he can officially install his dictatorship under the Insurrection Act. This is how it always goes down in banana republics.
Bootstrap
Kent State University, 1970, 4 dead, 9 wounded, all students and unarmed. The shooters: the Ohio National Guard. The president: Richard Nixon, who also felt he was above the law. We thought we had moved on from that type of leadership, but here we are again. A government riding roughshod over its people. No one is safe.
Evangel
History always repeats itself when new leaders ignore the past in pursuit of vainglory.
Slipstream
The documentary makes your blood run cold as you watch our military train other countries how to fight the "enemy," and recognize that it's what's happening in the U.S. today. The tactics are the same. The government has labelled protesters, unionists, dark-skinned people, liberals, and anyone who doesn't agree with them as the enemy and has trained and given the green light to government agents and the military to use deadly force. Anger, hate, and violence are promoted and praised from the top down. I pray we will somehow find a way out of this darkness.
Evangel
Thank you for taking the time to watch it. Everyone should, because it's an important piece of our history, and Trump is now hitching his carnival wagon to it, framing his illegal action in Venezuela and, soon, Greenland, as the "Donroe Doctrine".
Slipstream
He has to change everything to include his name. It's obvious he knows nothing about the original Monroe Doctrine, but one of his servants came up with that cute little play on words for a pat on the head.
Youngdannville
The gangsters who are running the country claim to be righteous, god loving and fearing people. If this is true I want no part of their god.
Evangel
Hitler made the same claim. He said the Nazi party's objective was to "translate the ideals of Christ into deeds" and finish "the work which Christ had begun but could not finish."
Well Street
Thank you for posting this documentary. I appreciated learning about the School of the Americas, but I am in disbelief over its legacy of murder, oppression, and trauma. The school was clearly highly skilled in recognizing talent, namely, those without morality and souls.
US tax dollars used to train killers reminds me of a music video for a song called "Right Now" by Van Halen. In one scene, a statement on the screen reads, "Right now, our government is doing things we think only other governments do."