# The Final Solution for Iraq is the same as for El Salvador. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 9, 2005, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838 "2005-01-09T04:11:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/1 "2005-01-09T04:11:52Z")
I’m not saying that, this administration brags about it. [http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpeng014060591dec01,0,7395129.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines](http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpeng014060591dec01,0,7395129.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines) > [@](#): > > During a mid-November visit to El Salvador, the only Latin American nation that currently has troops in the U.S. “coalition of the willing,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld praised the country’s conservative government. He said El Salvador “understands well the human struggle for liberty and democracy.” > > In drawing a parallel to Iraq, the secretary echoed the comments of Cheney in his Oct. 5 debate with John Edwards. The vice president argued that in 1980s El Salvador “a guerilla insurgency controlled roughly a third of the country, 75,000 people dead. And we held free elections. I was there as an observer on behalf of the Congress. … And as the terrorists would come in and shoot up polling places as soon as they left, the voters would come back and get in line and would not be denied their right to vote. And today El Salvador is … a lot better because we held free elections.” > > There is a serious problem with this story. The 75,000 people Cheney mentioned were indeed killed by terrorists, but not by the rebel FMLN forces that he intended to condemn. Rather, they were under assault from the very Salvadoran government that the Reagan administration was supporting and from its paramilitary death squads. With a list of opposition politicians having already been executed or exiled, the 1984 elections were little more than a farce designed to give democratic respectability to a regime that was perpetuating some of the worst human rights abuses in the hemisphere. > > Before peace accords ended the civil war in 1992, the United States would provide the bloody-handed Salvadoran government more than $6 billion in aid. But the victory that the neocons claim occurred in El Salvador is not what the American people are lead to believe: [http://www.counterpunch.org/allen12032004.html](http://www.counterpunch.org/allen12032004.html) > [@](#): > > Gilberto Soto, an organizer for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, was assassinated November 5 in El Salvador, where he was building links with Central American port workers. > > Soto was killed by two gunmen outside his mother’s house in Usulutan, 60 miles from the capital city of San Salvador. > > He was an organizer with the Teamsters Port Division in New Jersey and had spent the last several years in a campaign to organize port workers, mostly drivers, in the Northeastern U.S. A year ago, he began working with the Danish General Workers Union to document violations of worker rights by Maersk, one of the largest shipping companies in the world. > > Maersk has a long and rotten record in El Salvador. In 2001, for example, the company fired and blacklisted over 100 drivers in a vicious union-busting campaign. > > Soto had just arrived in El Salvador to begin his organizing work when he was assassinated. He had planned meetings with port workers who drive trucks for Maersk, and with labor officials in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras. > > El Salvador’s right-wing death squads–made up of members of the police and military–have a bloody history of harassing and killing trade unionists at the behest of the richest employers. It is likely that Soto was murdered by such a group. Yes, that was November 5th 2004. I was then going to make a pit thread then to roast Rummy and Co. but because of the tsunami I decided to let that go. Then this appeared: [http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/](http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/) > [@](#): > > The El Salvador option > > NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported “nationalist” forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. (Among the current administration officials who dealt with Central America back then is John Negroponte, who is today the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Under Reagan, he was ambassador to Honduras.) > > Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called “snatch” operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, officials tell NEWSWEEK. Lovely… In El Salvador, a country of 5 million, 75,000 had to die to prove a rotten point. If Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush think it is a good idea to apply an El Salvador solution[sup]TM[/sup] to Iraq we will have to accept that this is coming in the future: The population of Iraq is about 22 million, if we apply the El Salvador Solution[sup]TM[/sup] we are looking at 330,000 people dead before we are finished with Iraq. Mind you, the numbers mentioned here are the numbers of people that while opposed to the government, did not grab weapons to oppose it; at best, for the rotten status quo, they could have been sympathizers of the revels; and even then, that was in no way a reason why to kill them. If we apply the El Salvador solution[sup]TM[/sup] to Iraq, the picture of displaced people is frightening: [http://www.icomm.ca/carecen/page86.html](http://www.icomm.ca/carecen/page86.html) > [@](#): > > By 1983 the number of internally displaced persons in El Salvador had grown to 468,000, nearly ten percent of the country’s population. [AW ESOV page 29] Nearly a quarter of a million Salvadorans had sought refuge elsewhere in Central America or in Mexico by 1984 and approximately one-half million Salvadorans were living in the U.S. [AW ESOV page 31] Approximately one-quarter of the population was internally displaced or had left the country by 1984. [Aw ESOV page 32] If you keep counting, that applied to Iraq, means that about 2 million people will become refugees in Iraq and/or will leave Iraq! And oil that, I mean all that, only to then give the chewed bone to the United Nations to heal. For the USA, the El Salvador Solution[sup]TM[/sup] for Iraq will mean: even more American soldiers dead on the way to this solution, and then… Well, I hope that 10 years from now, you’ll like Iraqi cuisine! A :wally without a wink to Bush and Co! ---
**Author:** ![Brutus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/2 "2005-01-09T04:36:41Z")
Final Solution? That is the sort of hyperbole that will BRING ABOUT THE END OF THE WORLD! That, or you are really bad with words. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/3 "2005-01-09T04:52:25Z")
Well brer **Brutus** , I never had the illusion of being good with words (ask **EVE** ) I see you still have the illusion of having good replies, you will never learn… 10 years from now, I think an Iraqi-American doper will tell you here in the SDMB to stuff it. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/4 "2005-01-09T05:06:40Z")
Besides, my dear Popeye’s punching bag, the final solution in El Salvador did not entail genocide (and that is why I used the term “final solution as for El Salvador”, that solution also involved referring the mess to the UN) However, the thugs in El Salvador came close to emulate the Nazis, there were American citizens then that did the right thing and put some strings to the aid to those thugs, now some American citizens today have to do the right thing and be aware so as to not make a worse mistake now in Iraq. It was a mistake to get into Iraq, now the pinhead in the white house is planning to make it worse. ---
**Author:** ![Brutus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/5 "2005-01-09T05:13:06Z")
You do know what the words ‘Final’ and ‘Solution’ generaly mean when you put them together, right? I know, I know, it _could_ mean ‘last resolution’ or whatever, but in common usage, ‘Final Solution’ means one thing. And no, we are not going to institute the Holocaust Redux in Iraq. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/6 "2005-01-09T05:19:15Z")
> [@Brutus](#): > > You do know what the words ‘Final’ and ‘Solution’ generaly mean when you put them together, right? I know, I know, it _could_ mean ‘last resolution’ or whatever, but in common usage, ‘Final Solution’ means one thing. > > And no, we are not going to institute the Holocaust Redux in Iraq. I know that already you pea brain\*, I am talking about the El Salvador Solution[sup]TM[/sup] here, and why the administration is bragging about it, and why it is that people like you are ignoring what that solution means for Iraq. - I know, I am sorry, this is insulting to peas! My apologies! ---
**Author:** ![Brutus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/7 "2005-01-09T05:22:18Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > I am talking about the El Salvador Solution[sup]TM[/sup] Then why call it the ‘Final Solution’ in your title? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/8 "2005-01-09T05:30:11Z")
Because for this administration, the final solution will be to give it to the UN; no genocide required, but only after having 300,000 people dead. ---
**Author:** ![Paladud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Paladud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paladud)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/9 "2005-01-09T06:04:29Z")
**GIGO** , you clearly capitalized ‘Final Solution,’ amidst a title that was not fully capitalized. Your intent is obvious; Godwin’s Law applies here. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/10 "2005-01-09T06:10:51Z")
Two things: **Paladud** and **Brutus** : One: this is the pit. If this was GD I would have called it “The Exit Strategy of Iraq is the same as for El Salvador.” Still, I have to say I can not let the Nazi influence be left unsaid: in Latin America, the book “Prisoner without a name, cell without a number” by Jacobo Timerman showed to me that military thugs then did have the Nazis as inspirational models on how to get rid of undesirables. And if the administration wants to follow those footsteps… Two: The complete title of the thread is: “The Final Solution for Iraq is the same as for El Salvador”. IIRC **Brutus** complained in a GD thread that liberal dopers change the subject but in reality you excel on this **Brutus** , if you read a little of what happened in El Salvador you will know that, as you also said here, I was referring to the ‘last resolution’ of the USA regarding El Salvador; but fell free to continue changing the reprehensible subject of an administration bragging on applying a reprehensible ‘resolution’ to Iraq. ---
**Author:** ![Brutus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/11 "2005-01-09T06:19:12Z")
The Nazis also built fine roads, but we don’t say, ‘The Final Solution to our traffic problem will be expanding I-75!’. ‘Final Solution’ refers to a specific event, not every damned thing jerry did during the war. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/12 "2005-01-09T06:27:42Z")
> [@Paladud](#): > > **GIGO** , you clearly capitalized ‘Final Solution,’ amidst a title that was not fully capitalized. Your intent is obvious; Godwin’s Law applies here. [http://www.dickalba.demon.co.uk/usenet/guide/faq\_godw.html](http://www.dickalba.demon.co.uk/usenet/guide/faq_godw.html) > [@](#): > > 1. What is Godwin’s Law? > > This states that if one participant in a discussion calls another a Nazi or compares them to Hitler the thread has degenerated into personal abuse and there is no possibility of further rational discussion. I have not called any of the participats in this thread a Nazi. ---
**Author:** ![Paladud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Paladud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paladud)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/13 "2005-01-09T06:31:52Z")
Godwin’s Law applies in the Pit just as much as it does in GD. > [@](#): > > Still, I have to say I can not let the Nazi influence be left unsaid: in Latin America, the book “Prisoner without a name, cell without a number” by Jacobo Timerman showed to me that military thugs then did have the Nazis as inspirational models on how to get rid of undesirables. And if the administration wants to follow those footsteps… First, you’re comparing ethnic cleansing of civilians to the suppression of an armed insurgency. Second, you’re doing so on a claim of ‘inspiration’ which is not even backed by a linked cite. And third, it’s a long stretch to Godwinize the US government just because they are allegedly considering emulating a group that was allegedly inspired by Nazi techniques. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/14 "2005-01-09T06:32:05Z")
> [@Brutus](#): > > The Nazis also built fine roads, but we don’t say, ‘The Final Solution to our traffic problem will be expanding I-75!’. ‘Final Solution’ refers to a specific event, not every damned thing jerry did during the war. It is only you who is still insisting on the genocide aspect of the solution, but carry on. Meanwhile, one has to see what the thugs in Iraq that we support are up to: > [@](#): > > Shahwani also said that the U.S. occupation has failed to crack the problem of broad support for the insurgency. The insurgents, he said, “are mostly in the Sunni areas where the population there, almost 200,000, is sympathetic to them.” He said most Iraqi people do not actively support the insurgents or provide them with material or logistical help, but at the same time they won’t turn them in. One military source involved in the Pentagon debate agrees that this is the crux of the problem, and he suggests that new offensive operations are needed that would create a fear of aiding the insurgency. “The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists,” he said. “From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation.” > Pentagon sources emphasize there has been decision yet to launch the Salvador option. Last week, Rumsfeld decided to send a retired four-star general, Gary Luck, to Iraq on an open-ended mission to review the entire military strategy there. But with the U.S. Army strained to the breaking point, military strategists note that a dramatic new approach might be needed—perhaps one as potentially explosive as the Salvador option. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/15 "2005-01-09T06:43:18Z")
> [@Paladud](#): > > Godwin’s Law applies in the Pit just as much as it does in GD. > First, you’re comparing ethnic cleansing of civilians to the suppression of an armed insurgency… If you think I said that, just stop and consider that you are stuck on that point only avoid replying to the plans of the administration. (hint: there is no genocide on that solution, it is still rotten) > [@](#): > > Second, you’re doing so on a claim of ‘inspiration’ which is not even backed by a linked cite. Here is another hint to you: I am from El Salvador and I saw most of it. > [@](#): > > And third, it’s a long stretch to Godwinize the US government just because they are allegedly considering emulating a group that was allegedly inspired by Nazi techniques. If you think I am sorry for using a reference to the Nazis, you have another thing coming, to me what the military Latin American thugs did was not as bad as the Nazis only because the USA had some scruples left and did threaten to remove aid when situations where approaching mass murder. The problem, as the articles are showing to me, is that now even America is following that path, **there will be no genocide** , but crimes galore will be ok then… ---
**Author:** ![Paladud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Paladud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paladud)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/16 "2005-01-09T06:50:11Z")
[Another, more conventional opinion on Godwin’s law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law) > [@](#): > > As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. > There is a tradition in many Usenet newsgroups that once such a comparison is made, the thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. This does not necessarily mean a Nazi-fied _ad hominem_ within the thread but any such comparison without direct historical relevance. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > It is only you who is still insisting on the genocide aspect of the solution, but carry on. What other aspect of it ever existed? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/17 "2005-01-09T06:58:21Z")
> [@Paladud](#): > > What other aspect of it ever existed? Now why I am getting the feeling you are still avoiding the subject? Well, gee I don’t know, I keep saying The El Salvador Solution[sup]TM[/sup] But if you remain stuck on genocide, let me tell you that there was none in in El Salvador, but thousand of innocents did die with American Support, much worse (but still no genocide\*) is going to happen in Iraq if we don’t say anything. ---
**Author:** ![Brutus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/18 "2005-01-09T06:59:33Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Well, gee I don’t know, I keep saying The El Salvador Solution[sup]TM[/sup] Not in your title. Stop being obtuse about it. ---
**Author:** ![Paladud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Paladud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paladud)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/19 "2005-01-09T07:02:43Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > If you think I said that, just stop and consider that you are stuck on that point only avoid replying to the plans of the administration. (hint: there is no genocide on that solution, it is still rotten) Then it has zip shit to do with The Final Solution. > [@](#): > > Here is another hint to you: I am from El Salvador and I saw most of it. Fair enough. > [@](#): > > If you think I am sorry for using a reference to the Nazis, you have another thing coming, to me what the military Latin American thugs did was not as bad as the Nazis only because the USA had some scruples left and did threaten to remove aid when situations where approaching mass murder. The problem, as the articles are showing to me, is that now even America is following that path, **there will be no genocide** , but crimes galore will be ok then… Then you’ll agree that your thread title doesn’t have shit to do with your post aside from the countries involved. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838/20 "2005-01-09T07:03:20Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > It is only you who is still insisting on the genocide aspect of the solution, but carry on. **Brutus** is simply trying to hijack the thread away from the sheer horror of this Administration’s “strategy” by nitpicking a trivial side issue instead. It’s a favorite strategy among all the right-wing nutjobs today, like nitpicking the soldier who asked Rummy about inadequate Humvee armor instead of wondering why it had to be asked… [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-final-solution-for-iraq-is-the-same-as-for-el-salvador/283838.md?page=2)