![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/reaganmontt-e1369142686632.jpg\")
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The Rios Montt trial set back a month and will now likely collapse<\/a>, a sad day for international justice. But for neoconservatives, the decision is good news, because Reagan\u2019s shady connections with Montt have been exposed<\/a> (for the few willing to discover them). And yet some on the right are still trying to protect Montt and Reagan – here\u2019s how you spin a genocide.<\/p>\n J. Michael Waller calls blaming the U.S. \u201ceasy propaganda.\u201d He writes in the New York Times that<\/a>,<\/p>\n The Rios Montt prosecution was less about justice and more about using the courts to wage political propaganda campaigns to settle old scores. Rios Montt\u2019s real crime was not genocide, according to prevailing logic, but his political beliefs… shouldn\u2019t former insurgents who committed war crimes in the 1980s also face justice?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n We\u2019ll hear more \u201cblame the insurgents\u201d arguments later, but for now, let\u2019s take a look at how the United Nations Commission for Historical Clarification<\/a> report on the atrocities. They find that U.S. backed government forces, not the rebels, committed 93 percent of the crimes.<\/p>\n The Washington Office of Latin America reports<\/a>,<\/p>\n R\u00edos Montt has long been identified by human rights activists in Guatemala and internationally as the man in charge during the period of the most notorious human rights abuses committed during Guatemala\u2019s civil war; massacres and targeted attacks on indigenous Mayan communities were widespread during his regime. R\u00edos Montt\u2019s trial and conviction are a vindication for the victims and their families, as well as a re-assertion of the principle that indiscriminate attacks on civilian communities during wartime can never be justified.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But it was really Montt\u2019s political views that sunk him.<\/p>\n In Foreign Policy, Jose Cardenas defends Reagan in a similar way, downplaying the crimes, and saying that Reagan\u2019s \u201cgamble\u201d just didn\u2019t pan out. He writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n If someone wants to argue that the Reagan administration’s policy gamble on R\u00edos Montt to quell the violence did not pan out, then that’s one thing (history books are full of such examples). But to equate it with aiding and abetting “genocide” is beyond the pale. In fact, it is more evidence of an ideological agenda than any noble search for accountability.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In this retelling, we have a United States that merely supported, with the intent of quelling violence, a fascist dictator. Reagan, it\u2019s worth noting, said of Montt<\/a>:<\/p>\n I know that President Rios Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment. I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice. My administration will do all it can to support his progressive efforts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Let\u2019s turn again to the most authoritative source we have on the crimes – the UN Report. Rather than fingering the U.S. as merely a financial supporter, the report argues that many of the crimes originated from U.S. doctrines. From the report:<\/p>\n In the case of Guatemala, military assistance was directed towards reinforcing the national intelligence apparatus and for training the officer corps in counterinsurgency techniques, key factors which had significant bearing on human rights violations during the armed confrontation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Later on:<\/p>\n Anti-communism and the National Security Doctrine (DSN) formed part of the anti-Soviet strategy of the United States in Latin America. In Guatemala, these were first expressed as anti-reformist, then anti-democratic policies, culminating in criminal counterinsurgency.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n From the right we have a story of the Reagan administration being entirely unaware of the abuses and seeking a means of quelling the violence. From the truth commission we get an entirely different story: U.S. National Security Doctrine actively encouraged violence.<\/p>\n We also have this recently declassified memo from the U.S. embassy in Guatemala<\/a>, which shows U.S. officials downplaying the atrocities for fear Congress would cut off funding:<\/p>\n We conclude that a concerted disinformation campaign is being waged in the U.S. against the Guatemalan government by groups supporting the Communist insurgency in Guatemala… The campaign\u2019s object is simple: to deny the Guatemalan Army the weapons and equipment needed from the U.S. to defeat the Guerrillas.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Next up is Mary O’Grady who, in The Wall Street Journal<\/i>, basically blames the guerillas and makes the absurd assertion that the deaths occurred in crossfire.<\/p>\n The tragedy was that the guerrilla strategy had brought the war to the Ixil lands in order to use the civilians. When the army, bent on rooting out the terror, followed, the population was forced to take sides or be caught in the crossfire. That’s why so many died.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Of course, that’s not what happened. Montt believed that the Ixil Indians were inferior people, the offensive was premeditated, not “crossfire.” Read the following news clippings and decide whether the Ixil Indians were “caught in the crossfire.”<\/p>\n Rigoberta Menchu, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, described the murder of her family<\/a>:<\/p>\n As for my mother, we never found her remains, either \u2026 If her remains weren’t eaten by wild animals after having been tortured brutally and humiliated, then her remains are probably in a mass grave close to the Ixil region \u2026 My father was also burned alive in the embassy of Spain [in Guatemala City] on January 30th, 1980.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Reuters describes what occurred<\/a> thusly,<\/p>\n When Rios Montt was in power, his government launched a fierce offensive in which soldiers raped, tortured and killed tens of thousands of Maya villagers suspected of helping Marxist rebels. Thousands more were forced into exile or had to join paramilitary forces fighting the insurgents.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n O’Grady also presents the army as “bent on rooting out terror.” Such claims do not align with the U.N. report finding that most of the violence was perpetrated by government forces.<\/a> Cable released during the commission report revealed that<\/a> the U.S. was aware of: \u201cabductions, bombings, street assassinations and executions of real or alleged communists,\u201d and that, \u201cseveral villages have been burned to the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n Kate Doyle,Guatemala project director at the National Security Archive, who first obtained the memos told the Guardian that the memos tell a story of \u201cour intimacy with the Guatemalan security forces.\u201d<\/p>\n Rios Montt\u2019s crimes were real, and sadly, the United States had a role in them. We shouldn\u2019t \u201cspin\u201d the genocide out of these atrocities. Rather, Montt should be convicted, to allow reconciliation. Clinton has already apologized<\/a>, saying<\/p>\n It is important that I state clearly that support for military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread repression of the kind described in the report was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake. We must and we will instead continue to support the peace and reconciliation process in Guatemala.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Such an admission is admirable and factually accurate, making it all the more absurd that the right is trying to spin genocide for political points.<\/p>\n Sean McElwee has\u00a0previously written for\u00a0<\/em>The Day<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>The\u00a0<\/a>Norwich Bulletin<\/a>\u00a0and on\u00a0<\/em>WashingtonMonthly.com<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Reason.com<\/a>. He is a\u00a0writer for\u00a0<\/em>The Moderate Voice.<\/a>\u00a0Visit his blog a<\/em>t seanamcelwee.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Rios Montt trial set back a month and will now likely collapse, a sad day for international justice. But for neoconservatives, the decision is good news, because Reagan\u2019s shady connections with Montt have been exposed (for the few willing to discover them). And yet some on the right are still trying to protect Montt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":115,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-20063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20063"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20066,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20063\/revisions\/20066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20063"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=20063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![U.N. report finding that most of the violence was perpetrated by government forces.<\/a> Cable released during the commission report](\"http:\/\/shr.aaas.org\/guatemala\/ceh\/report\/english\/graphics\/charts\/page86.gif\"){kind=link}