Crossing the line

Alex Coolman

Today, Frank Forbath is heading to Fort Benning, Ga. And when he arrives,

he plans to be arrested.

The Costa Mesa resident is one of 10,000 protesters who are expected to

turn out at the Army base for an annual demonstration against Fort

Benning’s School of the Americas, a controversial academy for Latin

American military officers.

Though the protest is intended to be of the nonviolent variety, many of

those attending, including Forbath, plan to “cross the line,” venturing

onto government property at the School of the Americas headquarters. When

they do, they’ll be arrested for trespassing.

The point of the protest, Forbath said, is “to continue to raise

awareness to put pressure on Congress, to put pressure on Clinton and

[defense secretary William] Cohen to close this school, which is a

humiliation to the U.S. because of its continual support of the violation

of human rights and dignity.”

The School of the Americas, an institution founded by the American

military in 1946, has as its goal “introducing individuals to the

democratic system of government” and creating “a better understanding and

better relationship between the armies of Latin America and the United

States,” said Nicolas Britto, spokesperson for the academy.

For decades, the school has been the target of critics who accuse it of

turning out graduates who are little more than brutal commandos. The

behavior of School of the Americas alumni -- like Manuel Noriega and Omar

Torrijos of Panama, according to the nonprofit group, School of the

Americas Watch -- owes a great deal to the curriculum developed by the

American military.

The 1991 discovery that Army manuals on torture, blackmail and false

imprisonment were used in school courses added fuel to the critical fire.

Britto said charges that the school teaches its students to violate human

rights are inaccurate.

“We don’t teach anything that is any different from any other Army

school,” he said. “The only difference that we have is that the

instruction is in Spanish. ... The statements that they are making that

we teach torture, murder and rapes are absolutely false.”

Forbath has been involved with the Orange County Coalition to Close the

School of the Americas since 1994, and he has acted as chair or co-chair

of the group for several of those years.

He said he is participating in the protest in part because he believes

Congressmen Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) and Dana Rohrabacher

(R-Huntington Beach) haven’t done enough to address the ethical concerns

raised by the school.

“They have often traded what is the more right thing to do in favor of

what I would call expediency,” Forbath said. “They haven’t spent the time

to find out what’s really happening.”

Despite Forbath’s qualms about Cox’s record on the school, Cox said he

voted in October to cut off funding to the academy unless human

rights-related reforms were made to its curriculum.

Rohrabacher dismissed criticism about the school as outdated.

“There were some legitimate concerns in the past, but there were some

legit concerns in the past about American foreign policy,” he said. “The

School of the Americas is fulfilling a very useful service in ensuring

that military personnel from developing countries are trained in a

professional way.”

Forbath doesn’t act on his political views only in Georgia. He is locally

known for the work he does with his wife, Jean, in connection with Share

Our Selves, a social service agency for the homeless and disadvantaged.