Citation:
Abstract:
Imagine a scene in which United States military engineers—the wartime builders of command bunkers, field hospitals, and runways for jet fighters—brought their skills to the poorest reaches of the Third World to construct schools, clinics, and access roads at no cost to the local populace. This scenario, part of the Defense Department?s Humanitarian and Civic Assistance (HCA) program, exists under United States law in the form of military exercises sponsored by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and, in Latin America, by the United States Southern Command (SouthCom). If it falls short of the biblical peace ideal of beating swords into plowshares, it comes close, hitching the Army mule to plow nonetheless. More difficult to imagine might be the fact that Army engineers did such a thing in the Republic of Colombia, in cooperation with the Colombian government, and that their help was overwhelmingly rejected, in disbelief and scandal, by the people of Colombia.