Political Irony

Three law enforcement officers (from three different police departments) involved in the Ferguson events have been suspended because of their extremely racist words and actions. How extreme? Here are some examples, courtesy of New York magazine:

St. Louis County officer Dan Page appears in a video posted to YouTube of an hour long speech he gave to the Oath Keepers, where he calls black people “little perverts”, Obama “that illegal alien claiming to be president”, gay people “sodomites”, Muslims “they will kill you”. But most troubling is his attitude toward killing:

I personally believe in Jesus Christ as my lord savior, but I’m also a killer. I’ve killed a lot. And if I need to, I’ll kill a whole bunch more. If you don’t want to get killed, don’t show up in front of me, it’s that simple. I have no problem with it. God did not raise me to be a coward.

Officer Page originally gained notoriety because he pushed CNN anchor Don Lemon while he was reporting live during a demonstration in Ferguson.

Next is Officer Matthew Pappert who works for the Glendale Police Department, which operates near where Michael Brown was killed by the police. After the protests started, Pappert started posting racist remarks to his Facebook page, including “These protesters should have been put down like a rabid dog the first night.” Pappert also called the demonstrators “a burden on society and a blight on the community” and “thugs” and suggested that “a Muslim with a backpack” deal with them somehow.

Last but not least is St. Ann Police Department officer Ray Albers, who came to fame for pointing a semi-automatic assault rifle at protestors in front of the media, to whom he threatened “I will fucking kill you”. When asked for his name by a reporter whom he had just shoved, he responded “Go fuck yourself.”

How does war mongering work? Well, first you plant the seeds of fear.

So it is hardly any surprise that presidential candidate and governor of Texas Rick Perry told an audience at the conservative Heritage Foundation in DC that it is a “very real possibility” that terrorists from the extremest group ISIS may have crossed into the US at the southern border. He did add that he has absolutely no evidence to support this, but the point he made is that as long as the border is insecure “individuals from ISIS or other terrorist states could be” taking advantage of the situation. “We need to have clear and compelling forces, both law and enforcement and otherwise, to send the message that the border is secure.”

Of course, making a border as long and isolated as the US southern border completely secure is completely impossible. And even if you could, how would you stop a terrorist-filled boat from landing anywhere on our extensive coastlines? It just reminds me of Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) that threw hundreds of billions of dollars at defense contractors to guard against a threat that turned out to be a tempest in a teapot.

Perry went on to call for a stronger response to ISIS, including even more airstrikes. “When they talk about limited airstrikes, they place a great emphasis on the word ‘limited,’ yet clearly more airstrikes are necessary. Nothing less than a sustained air campaign to degrade and destroy ISIS forces is required.” And when asked by a reporter if he would support combat troops on the ground, Perry responded “all your options have to be open”.

The message of fear was amplified by a member of the Republican National Committee, who on her radio show said that the children from Central America coming across our border could be “highly trained as warriors who will meet up with their group here and actually rise up against us as Americans.” Her guest, a member of the Tea Party, agreed: “We do know that Hamas and Hezbollah run several training camps in Venezuela and other South American countries, and they are training these young – these youths – beginning as early as 8 or 9 years old through the MS13 gangs. They are being trained as warriors, you’re absolutely right.”

While I have a great deal of sympathy for the opinion that when we invaded Iraq (based on lies and misinformation), we broke it and now we have responsibility for fixing it. But the real question is what can we do that won’t merely make the situation worse?

When you hear the exact same warning from people as divergent as Rand Paul and the CATO Institute, Glenn Greenwald and the ACLU, and even nonpolitical sources like Popular Mechanics, you suspect that you should take the problem seriously.

The problem? The escalating militarization of police departments across the country. Do police still protect citizens, or are they acting more like occupying forces? These people see the police action that is happening in Ferguson MO as frighteningly similar to military action like in Iraq or Afghanistan.

How did this happen? The recent escalation was caused by the post-911 “War on Terror”, which threw advanced military equipment at local police forces, including machine guns, silencers, flash-bang grenades, and even tanks and aircraft. But it had its roots in earlier faux wars, like the “War on Drugs”, the creation of SWAT teams and the introduction of military tactics to routine policing.

A side effect of this, as we are seeing in Ferguson is that police increasingly treat the media as an enemy. This is a recipe for tragedy.

Indeed, even other police chiefs have criticized the aggressive police response in Ferguson, saying “you always have to be careful to walk a fine line not to over-react. Sometimes a big show of force in the beginning may not be the proper way to deal with it.” “Suiting up in riot gear and tossing tear gas is probably the worst way to deal with civil unrest.”

Invariably, escalation on one side invariably leads to escalation on the other. Indeed, Palestinian citizens have been tweeting messages of support to the protestors in Ferguson, including tips on how to deal with tear gas.

There has been some political response, such as a bill to curb the transfer of surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies for free, but with arms manufacturers (who have lots of lobbyists) making lots of money from this, it is doubtful anything will happen.

Another problem is the almost complete lack of police accountability. A Wisconsin man whose handcuffed son was shot point-blank in the head by police in front of his wife and daughter reports that the officer who killed his son was cleared of any wrongdoing in 48 hours, without taking statements from eyewitnesses. He also found that “In 129 years since police and fire commissions were created in the state of Wisconsin, we could not find a single ruling by a police department, an inquest or a police commission that a shooting was unjustified.”

UPDATE: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has a powerful essay about what is going on, and what needs to be done: “The Coming Race War Won’t Be About Race”.