Tag: defund the police

The Global War on Terrorism

W.J. Astore 

“Global” includes the “homeland” here in America

There’s an important point about America’s Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) that people often miss.

When the Bush/Cheney administration announced the GWOT after 9/11, I think nearly all Americans assumed that “global” meant everywhere but the “good” countries.  That global meant the axis of evil (Iraq, Iran, North Korea) and similar so-called bad actors, but that it didn’t mean countries like Canada — and certainly not the U.S. homeland.

But global really did mean everywhere on earth as we’ve watched the war on terror escalate domestically.  The U.S. government/security state has built the foundation and superstructure for a permanent war on terror, and it simply isn’t going to go away. The Iraq and Afghan wars are essentially over (both lost), and fears of North Korea have subsided as the military-industrial-congressional complex focuses on Ukraine, Russia, and China, but the GWOT continues. It’s now turned inwards, within and along our own borders, and those techniques that were practiced (if not perfected) in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere are now being used and inflicted upon ordinary Americans who are attempting to resist state-corporate authoritarianism.

The GWOT has come home — but perhaps it’s always been here.  What’s changed is how state-corporate entities can define almost any form of determined protest—even civil and nonviolent ones—as “terror.” Labeling someone a “domestic terrorist” gives state-corporate actors a whole host of powerful ways to punish activists, notes by Michael Gould-Wartofsky at TomDispatch.com.

At the same time, America has witnessed the “rise of the warrior-cop,” as Radley Balko noted in his book by that title. 

Three years ago, I wrote about the militarization of police forces at TomDispatch. This is what I wrote then:

America’s violent overseas wars, thriving for almost two decades despite their emptiness, their lack of meaning, have finally and truly come home. An impoverished empire, in which violence and disease are endemic, is collapsing before our eyes. “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” America’s self-styled wartime president [Donald Trump] promised, channeling a racist Miami police chief from 1967. It was a declaration meant to turn any American who happened to be near a protest into a potential victim 

As such demonstrations proliferate, Americans now face a grim prospect: the chance to be wounded or killed, then dismissed as “collateral damage.” In these years, that tried-and-false military euphemism has been applied so thoughtlessly to innumerable innocents who have suffered grievously from our unending foreign wars and now it’s coming home.

A few days ago, The Onion, a satirical news site, compared America’s obedience and passivity to power to the current situation in France. Here’s how they put it:

In an ongoing struggle against ruling-class oppression, the people of France again protested in a way that Americans are welcome to at any time, sources confirmed Thursday. According to reports, French citizens across the country were spotted hitting the streets en masse as a unified front against the institutional bondage that seeks to subjugate them while never failing to apply forceful pressure every time injustice strikes, which Americans can and should feel free to do whenever they so choose.

Yes, but are Americans truly “welcome” to protest “whenever they so choose”? We’d like to think so, especially as July 4th approaches (America! Land of the Free!), but who wants to be detained and thrown in jail for domestic terrorism? Anyone in America hankering to be labeled as a terrorist by the state, whether on the right or left of the political spectrum, even if the charge is eventually dismissed?

Searing photo of state violence at Kent State in 1970. The dead student’s name was Jeffrey Miller. The young woman crouched in shock and horror was Mary Ann Vecchio. Richard Nixon called the protesters “bums.” What would the state call them today—domestic terrorists?

Remember those innocent days of the 1960s when for some the police were “pigs” and the protesters were “bums” (Richard Nixon’s word for the students killed at Kent State)? Now those protesters could be charged with domestic terrorism even as various heavily armed enforcers of the law would likely be celebrated (consider all those “blue lives matter” flags, for example).

Remember when “defund the police” was briefly a thing? By which people meant less funding for militarized police forces and more for mental health services and the like. President Joe Biden and the Democrats realized any serious effort to restrain police power would leave them open to charges of being soft on crime, so Biden and the party simply declared: Fund the police. (Republicans concur, of course, even as they still accuse Biden and the Dems of being soft on crime.)

And there you have it. Fund the police at all levels, local, state, and federal, and grant them the kind of powers given to America’s “warriors” in the GWOT. Set them loose on all of America’s domestic “terrorists.” After all, the GWOT went so well in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and elsewhere. Surely it will go equally well in the Homeland. Right?

Addendum: In writing this, I came across a superb article by Patricia McCormick at the Washington Post on Mary Ann Vecchio, “the girl in the Kent State photo.” She was just 14 when the above photo was taken. She paid a high price, as the article recounts. Letters to her family accused her of being a “drug addict,” a “tramp,” or a “communist.” The then-governor of Florida suggested she was a “professional agitator” and therefore responsible for the students’ deaths. A Gallup poll back then, cited by McCormick, said that 58% of Americans blamed the students at Kent State and only 11% blamed the National Guardsmen who opened fire and killed the four students.

“Professional agitator” sounds much like today’s domestic terrorist. And let’s reflect on those 58% of Americans who believed the students at Kent State were responsible for their own deaths. How dare they block the free flight of “Made in USA” bullets with their young bodies? The “bums”! (“Domestic terrorists.”)

Tuesday Thoughts

W.J. Astore

Today, I parked behind a car that had a “Semper Fi” sticker for the Marines, an American flag sticker, another sticker that said “Don’t blame me, I voted for Trump,” and a final sticker that read: “The Media Is the Virus” (in place of Covid-19, I assume). It’s nice that people identify themselves so readily in America, thereby making it easier to avoid them. I’ve traveled to a few countries and I’ve never seen this proclivity for bumper stickers and the like replicated in other lands. What is it about Americans that we want our cars and trucks and SUVs to scream our views? Doesn’t matter if you’re “liberal” or a Trumper or what-have-you. Americans are very much in your face about their beliefs. Because, ah, freedom?

Who will win in 2022 and 2024: the woke Republicans, otherwise known as Democrats, or the unwoke ones who generally support Trump? And if you think Democrats like Joe Biden aren’t like Republicans, consider this: Biden is pro-police, pro-military, pro-war, and anti-worker in the sense that we’ve seen no increase to the federal minimum wage, no student debt relief, no meaningful health care reform, and no concerted effort to reduce inflation or to lower gasoline prices. As the rich get richer under Biden, generally the poor get poorer. Worked the same way under Trump and Obama, didn’t it?

If we judge Biden by his deeds as well as his words, he’s emulated the pro-business Republican-lite policies of Barack Obama, but with none of Obama’s charisma.

Isn’t it time America had a second party to choose from, rather than two right-wing factions of the same corporate uniparty?

Biden has a new press secretary who’s a Black female and a member of the LGBTQ community. Will it feel any better being lied to by her rather than a white female or the typical cis white male? As Cornel West noted, it’s not enough to put Black faces in high places if they’re just as committed to the Establishment as the typical cis white male. We need more than optical diversity in this country.

That said, I’d love to see more women in Congress (indeed, more women in all positions of power), and more diversity across America. But, again, if the “civilian” Secretary of Defense is from Raytheon via a career spent in the U.S. Army, does it really matter that he’s Black when he’s thoroughly a man of the military-industrial complex?

What if all NFL players wore peace symbols on their helmets rather than American flags? Would their heads explode first, or ours?

There’s no escaping the military-industrial complex. This weekend, I watched the Red Sox play the Rangers in Texas. There’s a huge blue and white ad for Lockheed Martin in the outfield; even worse, the company logo was superimposed on the pitcher’s mound! Every pitch, almost every play, was sponsored by my friends at Lockheed Martin, maker of the F-35 jet fighter, among other weapons. How heartening!

Trevor Story makes a play for the Red Sox as Lockheed Martin looms in the background

Remember those old commercials: baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet? Chevrolet has been replaced by Lockheed Martin, with our president visiting weapons factories to promote the Javelin missile. With our president shilling for weapons and with Congress shoveling more than $50 billion to Ukraine to sustain a devastating war, tell me again how Democrats are making the world safer and more secure?

What will be the next galvanizing cause that forces people into the streets? The last one was Black Lives Matter and protests against police brutality that briefly led to a “defund the police” moment, which really meant to decrease police militarization while allocating more funds for mental health, family counselors, and other non-violent approaches to defusing trouble. President Biden has already said the answer is to fund the police, not defund them. How is this a “democratic” message? How is this even remotely adequate as a response to the very real anger and grievances of the BLM movement?

Fifty years ago, George McGovern asked America “to come home.” To end foreign wars. To focus on our problems here. To cut the Pentagon budget and to refund the savings to the American people. Was he the last real Democrat to run for President? Why do you never, ever, hear about his ideas today?

Why has every president since Ronald Reagan used the office to cash in after leaving? Kudos to Jimmy Carter for being a true, humble, and honorable public servant, and for having a brother who briefly brought us Billy Beer.

What are your Tuesday thoughts, readers?