Permit me to provide a few details about the U.S. advisors in the Salvadoran Civil War (1979-1991), regarding their number, their mission, their activities, and their achievement.

The central accomplishment of the fifty-five U.S. military advisors in El Salvador was the virtual elimination of human-rights abuses by the Salvadoran armed forces in only ten years, as openly reported by Americas Watch and Amnesty International. There is no other explanation for this than the presence of U.S. advisors. They professionalized the Salvadoran military, and acted as enforcement 'watchdogs' for human rights -- inasmuch as they could, given there were only fifty-five of them, and half of those were staff advisors in the national headquarters.

U.S. advisors did not have any authority to 'supervise' any Salvadoran military activity at any level; neither the too-proud Salvadorans nor the U.S. Government would allow it. The advisors I know who were present at interrogations -- often by 'crashing' uninvited -- prevented torture and murder of prisoners simply by being present. The U.S. advisors' reputation for protection of human rights on both sides in the Salvadoran Civil War was so well-established, that both the military and the guerrillas insisted that the U.S. advisors oversee the implementation of the cease-fire that ended the war.

U.S. advisors were under strict orders to avoid combat -- advisor casualties might derail the Reagan Administration's strongly-criticized policy to support the Salvadoran government against the insurgents. But combat often came to the advisors, as the guerrillas infiltrated and attacked the bases where they worked, ambushed their convoys, and shot down their transport helicopters. The U.S. advisors were permitted to fight to defend themselves when they came under fire. And they did. These incidents were all described in detail in weekly reports to the U.S. Congress, and like the advisors' role in safeguarding human rights, are a matter of public record.

The success of the U.S. advisors in El Salvador raises the question, 'Would the abuses, and the war, have ended earlier if there had been more U.S. advisers?' We'll never know. The fifty-five advisor limit was set by the U.S. Congress and the Reagan Administration, to prevent lurching into 'another Vietnam,' which started with the deployment of thousands of advisors. It is worth noting, though, that the consensus among the U.S. diplomats and military advisors who were directly involved in the Salvadoran Civil War is that fifty-five, for all the hardships and limitations, was about right.

I hope these details help illuminate the role of U.S. advisors in that war. The question now is, what lessons from El Salvador can inform and serve the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan? Fortunately, protection of human rights is already an accepted tenet of future operations.

One need only look at Hezbollah - they've been practicing it for some years now in southern Lebanon. Oh that right, we were run-out of Lebanon and now we are in Afghanistan involved in another civil war or is that an insurgency?