Latin America, Iraq push back to the U.S.

Today is Veterans Day in the United States, and tributes are being made across the nation to those women and men who have risked their lives on behalf of the principles they feel are represented by our country's armed forces. While I am opposed to our nation's military efforts, I hold great respect for the selfless service of these courageous individuals.

The U.S. military has many faces across our globe. Today's international news reports that the deal being sought between the U.S. and Iraqi governments on security cooperation and transition is in danger because Iraqi officials want more concessions from the U.S. -- especially regarding the immunity that U.S. soldiers have had to crimes committed on Iraqi soil. According to the AP, "The latest U.S. draft also strengthens language regarding Iraqi sovereignty but does not appear to make significant changes in the limited legal authority granted to Iraq to prosecute U.S. soldiers."

In an interesting parallel from another corner of the earth, yesterday's Christian Science Monitor, one of the top newspapers in the country for international news coverage, headlined a story titled "In Latin America, leftist leaders evict U.S. drug warriors," which reported on a growing consensus across the Americas that U.S. governmental agencies and armed forces have become unwelcome in this hemisphere. One example cited was Ecuador, which will evict the U.S. military base in its city of Manta next year.

John Lindsay-Poland, co-director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation's Task Force on Latin America and the Caribbean, is quoted in the Monitor article. Lindsay-Poland has been an active member of the international No Bases campaign, which seeks to close foreign military bases across the globe -- the U.S. has at least 700 known bases, and according to some researchers, well more than 1,000 distributed throughout the world.

Lindsay-Poland has also been cited in numerous media stories over the past two weeks for his research on the connections between members of the Colombian armed forces and extrajudicial killings of civilians in that country. That research has played a pivotal role in the recent firings of numerous Colombian army officers, including Army General Montoya. With the annual School of the Americas Watch protest taking place later this month at Fort Benning, Georgia, we are reminded that it is critical to pay close attention to not only our military's visible footprint, but also the less obvious ways (training, technical assistance, etc.) that our military has a powerful impact on human rights and peacemaking across the world.