Dirty Hands

• death squads are necessary
• legitimate grievances
• even good democracies are guilty of using terror

rationale

• El Salvador required a fundamental change in that country's authoritarian culture
• the reason for increasing government support was due to death squads
• programs such as land reform where irrelevant to the increase
• the CIA determined death squads a critical part of the governments ability to stay in power
• contrasted with nicaragua which was a simple arm and train process

Legitimate grievances

• insurgents had legitimate cause to seek change
• the only way to defeat them was to redress the grievances
• the US goal in low intensity conflicts is to build viable plitical, economic, military, and social institutions
• multilateral approach not just military
• coin was linked to legitimacy
• conditionality was the only enforcement tool the US Had
• american association with the thugs mitigated their thuggery

• El Salvador was armeica’s most expensive milltary endeavor between Vietnam and the Persian gulf conflict.
• It required America to change the country’s authoritarian culture,
• political practices and its economic social and military structure

nation building

• this contrasts with the case of Nicaragua where they just armed and trained a guerrilla force and subeverted the economy and regime in whatever other ways they could
• the American connection with the Salvadoran government of murdered and sadists was not made by the anti-communist Reagan administration but by moderate democrat jimmy carter.