[ To honor those who have died and suffered from the fires Biden
nominee Elliott Abrams lit and fanned abroad, we must stop his
appointment.]
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THE CRIMES AND DANGERS OF ELLIOTT ABRAMS: WHY BIDEN SHOULD NOT
APPOINT HIM  
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Ariel Gold and Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler
July 14, 2023
Fellowship Magazine
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_ To honor those who have died and suffered from the fires Biden
nominee Elliott Abrams lit and fanned abroad, we must stop his
appointment. _

Elliott Abrams,

 

It was a bright sunny March morning in 1980. Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo
Romero was saying mass at a church hospital in San Salvador when a
bullet from a sniper rifle ripped through his heart. He stumbled and
fell to the ground, dead.

Romero started life and ministry as a conservative. But, after his
friend Rev. Rutilio Grande was assassinated to discourage other faith
leaders from supporting Salvadorian peasants, Romero underwent a
political and theological conversion. Picking up where Grande left
off, Romero embraced a “theology of liberation,” a perspective
that espouses G-d’s preference for the poor and oppressed. His
visibility as archbishop elevated his voice and the credibility of his
critique of the conditions faced by peasants in El Salvador.

A month before his assassination, Romero wrote President Jimmy Carter
requesting a halt to U.S. military assistance to the Salvadoran
government.

Over 250,000 people attended Romero’s funeral demonstrating the love
of the Salvadoran people and echoing his demands for justice.
Tragically, however, they were swimming against a historical current
of meddling and manipulation which included murder, often orchestrated
or at the very least condoned from the U.S.

Intentionally ignoring two U.S. embassy cables naming the general who
ordered his personal bodyguard to carry out the assassination of
Romero, in 1982, Elliot Abrams, the newly appointed Assistant
Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, said,
“anybody who thinks you’re going to find a cable that says that
Roberto d’Aubuisson murdered the archbishop is a fool.” Thanks to
Abrams and his ilk’s support, U.S. military assistance to the
Salvadoran regime was dramatically increased that year. The following
year, the U.S. gifted the Salvadoran military and government with U.S.
advisors.

Last week, President Biden nominated Republican Senate leader Mitch
McConnell’s pick to join the State Department Bipartisan Advisory
Commission on Public Diplomacy, Elliot Abrams. If you’re not already
outraged and infuriated, keep reading.

Under Abrams’ watch, over the 12 years of the Reagan/Bush Sr.
administrations, 75,000 Salvadorians were killed. In the village of El
Mozote, the army’s Atlácatl Battalion herded women and children
into a church convent and opened fire with U.S.-supplied M-16
automatic rifles before burning the building down. One hundred and
forty children
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average age six, were killed. In 1994, with blood still dripping from
his hands, Abrams referred to the U.S.’s record on El Salvador as a
“fabulous achievement.”

In addition to supporting the Salvadorian junta, Abrams was a defender
of the Guatemalan Montt regime which oversaw the mass murder, rape
and torture
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scores of Indigenous Ixil Mayan people in the 1980s. The Montt regime
was so brutal that it was later classified by the United Nations as
genocidal. From his conviction for lying to Congress during the
Iran-Contra affair, to his roles supporting the Iraq war, scuttling
the Iran nuclear deal, and attempting to orchestrate a coup in
Venezuela as recently as 2019, one thing is clear: Abrams doesn’t
have a diplomatic bone in his body.

Abrams epitomizes an extreme form of American biblical nationalism,
dressed in the distortions of Christianity and Judaism that ironically
echo the papal bulls of 1452. These papal decrees, known as the
“Doctrine of Discovery,” codify the rights of white nations to
acquire and dominate any lands they “discovered.” Similarly,
Abrams speaks the language of the Global North proclaiming that their
hegemony is the natural order of the world, as G-d wills it to be.

The Doctrine of Discovery inspired the Monroe Doctrine, which declared
the “right” to exploit and plunder Latin America to be exclusive
to the U.S. “We should consider any attempt on their part to extend
their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our
peace and safety,” President James Monroe said. This served as a
philosophical justification for the ideological boots Abram’s wore
to stomp all over Latin America, the Middle East and other places.
Abrams has left bloody footprints across the globe.

Steps have been taken over the past couple of decades to repair the
damage done by Abrams and Co. in Latin America and other parts of the
world. In December 2011, the El Salvadoran government apologized
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Mozote massacre
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In 2018, Oscar Romero was elevated to the status of saint
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Pope Francis said Romero “left the security of the world, even his
own safety, in order to give his life according to the gospel.” And
just a few months ago, on March 30, the Vatican, formally repudiated
the “Doctrine of Discovery,” and called it antithetical to the
Catholic faith.

Justice is long overdue for Romero, the other Salvadorian faith
leaders who were murdered in the 1980s, the children murdered in El
Mozote, and the Ixil Mayan women raped by death squads in Guatemala.
To honor those who died and continue to suffer from the fires Elliott
Abrams lit and fanned in their countries, we must reclaim the name of
G-d from the political and religious ideologies that twist it for
hatred and violence. The first step we must take is to ensure that
Abrams does not receive another appointment to another U.S.
administration. The blood of his victims call out from the ground, and
hearing their cries we are called to act and respond.

_[ARIEL GOLD is the executive director of the Fellowship of
Reconciliation. She was the national co-director of the antiwar
group CODEPINK [[link removed]], where she specialized in
campaigns for Palestinian rights. She is a member of Congregation
Tikkun v’Or [[link removed]] in Ithaca, New York where she
resides and has been a longtime active member of Jewish Voice for
Peace [[link removed]]._

_REV. GRAYLAN SCOTT HAGLER is the pastor emeritus at Plymouth United
Church of Christ, in Washington, D.C., and founder and director of
Faith Strategies, which engages in political ministry and partners
with FOR-USA. He is co-chair of the Black Homeownership Strike Task
Force to combat the racial wealth gap in Washington, D.C, and has
served as co-chair of the D.C. Poor People’s Campaign.]_

* El Salvador
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* Guatemala
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* Central America
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* U.S. Policy in Central America
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* CIA
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* Indigenous peoples
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* Militarism
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* religion
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* U.S. foreign policy
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* Torture
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* Rape
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* Iraq War
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* Neoconservatives
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* war crimes
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* war
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* Biden Administration
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* Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero
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* death squads
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