A real dialogue: Words to the critics of WHINSEC

By Scott McGrath and Joshua Gardner
Guest Writers

Not only does the conclusion that WHINSEC is wholly incapable of promoting the causes of peace or justice completely fail to consider the ability of WHINSEC graduates to think and act for themselves, but it also ignores the benefits of a properly trained security force.
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The fact of the matter is that several nations in the western hemisphere do not have an adequate number of quality institutions where professional training in the field of security is offered. WHINSEC is an American institution that offers security training to these nations.

Those who consider the violence taught in the school to be an evil, necessitating the closure of the school, may not have considered the cost in violence of not keeping WHINSEC open. The governments that choose to send personnel to WHINSEC often do so in the hopes of more effectively combating renegade paramilitary and guerilla factions that are often involved in such activities as kidnapping, extortion, narcotics trafficking and murder. If these officers and soldiers are unable to receive adequate training, they cannot effectively provide security for the country from other groups perpetrating violence and human rights violations.

Almost any form of knowledge is dual use, that is to say that it is capable of good or evil based on its application. A hammer can be used to destroy or to construct; medical knowledge can engineer biological weapons or can save human lives. The act of training people in effective security techniques to support the stability of a society is no different. Ought we shut down police academies after discovering that a relatively small number of police officers that attended those academies were involved in corruption?

WHINSEC’s training is focused on methodology and nothing more. All that can be argued is that WHINSEC made its students more effective, not that it made them more or less virtuous. It is a far stretch to think that courses in radio operation or vehicle maintenance (courses offered at WHINSEC) lead to an uncontrollable and irreversible shift in worldview such that a normally good person would then commit a human rights abuse.

SOA (School of Americas) Watch, a website critical of WHINSEC, makes no attempt to explain the reasons behind the actions of ‘notorious SOA graduates.’ The effect is the appearance that these ‘notorious graduates’ are killing innocent Latin Americans without cause, excluding even the preservation of the stability of society. A person capable of killing another for no reason is more likely to be a sociopath than a product of WHINSEC’s training.

The outright condemnation of WHINSEC shows a shallow examination of the numerous factors required to show that an institution necessarily produces immoral behavior in its graduates. This vilification also takes no account of the often violent situations already present in countries receiving security instruction from WHINSEC. Finally, it reflects a willful naïveté toward the 99 percent of graduates that have protected human rights more effectively after receiving training at WHINSEC.