Biden picks Elliot Abrams, defender of genocide and one of the worst men in the world.
Do you remember that day when the neo-con, regime changer, close adviser to Reagan, Bush and Trump, appeared before Congresswoman Ilhan Omar in testimony before a Congressional Committee.
She tore him to shreds for his history which included defending genocide in El Salvador.
“Mr. Abrams, in 1991 you pleaded guilty to two counts of withholding information from Congress regarding the Iran-Contra affair, for which you were later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush,” Omar began. “I fail to understand why members of this committee or the American people should find any testimony you give today to be truthful.”
“If I could respond to that —” Abrams replied, but Omar cut him off.
“It wasn’t a question,” she replied.
Abrams was visibly angered that anyone should hold him accountable for any part of his record of dirty deeds.
When Donald Trump chose Abrams to be the point man in its attack on Venezuela, his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said of Abrams that he would be a “true asset to our mission to help the Venezuelan people fully restore democracy and prosperity to their country”.
Abrams and democracy will never share the same room
When he worked for Ronald Reagan, it was Abrams who engineered the Iran-Contra affair which secretly armed the forces trying to overthrow the government of Nicaragua.
In her questioning of the unrepentant Abrams, Omar focused on his conviction for lying to Congress and his defense of mass murder.
When the civil war broke out in El Salvador in 1979, the US aided the right-wing military government against the left-wing insurgents, and provided it with aid and military assistance, including training.
In 1981, government soldiers from the US-trained Atlacatl Battalion slaughtered more than 750 men, women, and children in the village of El Mozote, raping girls as young as 10.
Not soon after, reports of the horror that the US-backed forces had perpetrated appeared in the US press — just one day before the Reagan administration was required to certify to Congress that the government of El Salvador was continuing to improve its human rights record (a condition required for US aid to the Salvadoran government to continue).
Abrams was assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs during all of this. In a July 1982 certification hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Abrams downplayed the El Mozote massacre.
Abrams told the Washington Post that “the administration’s record in El Salvador is one of fabulous achievement.”
Omar specifically questioned Abrams about this:
“In [a 1982 Senate] hearing, you dismissed as ‘communist propaganda’ [a] report about the massacre of El Mozote,” she said. “You later said that the US policy in El Salvador was a ‘fabulous achievement.’ Yes or no: Do you still think so?”
Abrams responded angrily that the fact that El Salvador “has been a democracy” since 1984 is “a fabulous achievement.” When Omar demanded that Abrams answer, yes or no, whether he thinks the El Mozote massacre was “a fabulous achievement,” he responded that that was “a ridiculous question” and said he refused to answer.
She pushed again, yes or no, and he said “no.”
And this week Democrat Joe Biden selected Elliot Abrams to be on his State Department's Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.
What the hell was he thinking?
In his recent substack post my brother Mike tried to explain it:
Someone asked me why Biden would appoint such a man. My answer: 1) Though Biden is a Democrat and Abrams a Republican, both are hawks when it comes to the war in Ukraine and a military confrontation with China and 2) It’s another bone he’s tossing to the neocons to firm up the united front against Trump and the MAGAs with elections coming soon.
The choice is so offensive that it remains for Biden and the administration to try to explain it.
But don’t count on that happening.