Insurgencies in Central America

[CSC2005]

Bill

Welcome. I just finished your book two weeks ago. I wrote a review on Amazon.com. I posted it below. A great book, I really enjoyed it. I am a DoD intel type who was down in Central America last October doing some cultural field work.

Quantico, VA
my Amazon profile
http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile...472585-5623156


Tales of a Cold War Grunt, January 14, 2007
FOUR STARS
Reviewer: Art (Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews
Contra Cross is unique among personal memoirs of former soldiers, government officials, diplomats, and intelligence officers. The author is humble. He had a front row seat at the numerous Central American proxy wars the United States engaged in during the 1980s. Despite this experience, the author never believed he was as important as the events around him, a trait that so many memoirs lack. He was a Cold War grunt and he knew it.

The numerous insurgencies and counter-insurgencies fought in Central America are slowly being forgotten. Located between the large and divisive Vietnam War and the even larger Global War on Terror, the proxy wars in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador are now seen as the last gaps of the Cold War. Despite this hindsight, during the 1980s it was where the action was.

Since the author was involved at the ground level, he is able to give the people of the area a real human feel, which is lost in the Cold War rhetoric of policy makers from Washington.

The author makes several outstanding points about the need for cultural and language skills when dealing with local conflicts. While our current conflict is called the Global War on Terror it is the really combination of thousands of local conflicts tied together. Having the deep local cultural knowledge is the real key to winning our current war. While the book is far from being the seminal book on U.S. involvement in Central America, it never tries or claims to be. Its true strength is how it depicts dedicated Americans, whether military or Department of State, attempt to implement strategic policy made thousands of miles away in Washington into actual action on the ground amongst real people.

[Bill Meara]

Thanks Art. I really appreciate your reviewing the book. Bill

[Tom Odom]

It is often quipped that the mark of a brilliant man is that he agrees with what you believe; I read Bill Meara's book Contra Cross yesterday and I would use the word brilliant and brilliantly delivered to describe it.

Let me back up in time a bit. In 1988 just back from UN duty in Lebanon and Egypt I sat down in my 15-man section at CGSC and we did the "where I have been and what I have been doing" confessional. My section leader looked at me and quipped, "you have not been in the Army." I simply asked him and the larger group, "Have any of you been shot at lately?" No one answered. Later the same guy in discussing low intensity conflict remarked, "I cannot see anyway the US Army will ever get involved in a counter-insurgency again after what happend in Vietnam." I asked him what exactly he thought was going on in Central America at the very moment. He suggested that what was happening was not really the US Army. Six years later I greeted that same individual as he arrived in Goma with a water truck task force. He had a stunned look on his face. I said, "Welcome to my world."

Contra Cross is about Bill Meara's world, one like and at once unlike my own. The book is from the foot soldier's perspective and it offers unique insights on the wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Bill was an SF officer trained in PSYOP and as a FAO. He served in uniform with the MilGroup in El Salvador and later as a Foreign Service Officer as liaison to the Contras from Honduras. Like any good read, Bill's book offers key themes and messages, weaving them through the pages, repeatedly exposing the reader to them in the hopes they will imprint. I will list some here:

• Culture and Cultural Understanding is Critical

• Language is Fundamental

• COIN and Guerrilla Warfare Target the Minds of the Population, Not the Enemy

• The Greatest Cultural Gap is Between DC and the Field

• The Unconventional Warrior is Indeed From Venus and the Conventional Warrior Refuses to Visit From Mars

I tell every Soldier that I coach, teach, and mentor that I have two fundamental rules for cross cultural understanding:

• They do not think like you do
  
• They have an agenda in every interaction with you

Bill's narrative hammers home the first point and his story reinforces the second. His self-reflection on his role as an US government representative while serving as liaison to the Contras is one of the books greatest strengths.

I would recommend this book to all from Strategic Corporal to the White House. I only wish that it had come out earlier.

Great job, Bill!

Sincerely,

Tom Odom
Author Journey Into Darkeness: Genocide in Rwanda

[Jedburgh]

El Salvador turns war history into tourism

...or a fee, former guerrillas will take visitors on tours of former battlefields or mountain hideouts, while museums display war memorabilia. The government has applauded the effort as a way to draw more tourists to El Salvador.

The former Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, which led the guerrilla uprising, has teamed up with local business leaders to create the so-called “peace route".

The mountain town of Perquin, east of San Salvador, was considered the “guerrilla capital” during the fighting, and it served as the FMLN’s headquarters. Today, it is home to the “Museum of the Revolution,” and features cannons, uniforms, pieces of Soviet weaponry and other weapons of war once used by the FMLN....