I recently sent an article by John Dear to a conservative friend of mine. Dear is a Catholic priest in New Mexico who has been quite vocal in his opposition to the Iraq War and clearly war in general. My conservative friend had obviously thought that I sent this article as an invitation to re-open a discussion of our opposing views on the war, when in fact my actual intent was to address the violence meme I most recently discussed in "An invitation to violence" (directly below), my review of the handling of the recent FTAA protests in Miami.

Consider this passage from Dear's article, in which he describes events which occured when his local National Guard recieved its deployment orders for Iraq:

But I was surprised the following morning to hear 75 soldiers singing, shouting and screaming as they jogged down Main Street, passed our St. Joseph's church, back and forth around town for an hour. It was 6 a.m., and they woke me up with their war slogans, chants like "Kill! Kill! Kill!" and "Swing your guns from left to right; we can kill those guys all night."

Their chants were disturbing, but this is war. They have to psyche themselves up for the kill. ... The screaming and chanting went on for one hour. They would march passed the church, down Main Street, back around the post office, and down Main Street again. It was clear they wanted to be seen and heard. ...

Suddenly, at 7 a.m., the shouting got dramatically louder. I looked out the front window of the house where I live, next door to the church, and there they were--all 75 of them, standing yards away from my front door, in the street right in front of my house and our church, shouting and screaming to the top of their lungs, "Kill! Kill! Kill!" Their commanders had planted them there and were egging them on.

I was astonished and appalled. I suddenly realized that I do not need to go to Iraq; the war had come to my front door. ... This, I think, is a new tactic. ... I decided I had to do something.

Now some may consider this a simple isolated incident, and certainly no physical harm came to Dean, but equally certain is that these Guardsmen were acting under direct orders from their superior officer, orders clearly issued in violation of the law with the exact intent of harassing and physically intimidating a civilian, and a Catholic priest at that. Apparently, not even men of the cloth are to be spared from this sort of threat. But where did this superior officer ever get the idea that this was acceptable military conduct?

---

I've been recently been increasing my focus on this violence meme that a number of "conservative" commentators seem hell-bent on establishing (or perhaps re-establishing) of late. While "An invitation to violence" does not directly address the efforts of these commentators, it does address the results of these efforts; the idea that violence is becoming an acceptable element of civil discourse. Of course, detractors will be quick to suggest that I am some sort of conspiracy nut; that it is silly to think that these commentators actually want such violence to occur (they claimed the same during Vietnam), and sillier still to think that they are in alliance with any that might eventually perpetrate such violence. There is of course no such conspiracy, but that is not the point. The point is that by constantly using violent imagery, these commentators seek to desensitize others to the idea of violence against US (and other) civilians. This desensitization takes many forms, and I would suggest that both this incident with Father Dear and the Miami incidents are warning signs that this violence meme is taking hold.

Other recent signs of this come via Atrios in the form of two recent Letters to the Editor:

• First, we have a letter from a medical doctor suggesting a "solution" to Iraqi dissident activity: For each US soldier killed in Iraq, we should simply go to the nearest Mosque and kill the first five Iraqis we encounter there. "After all," the doctor says, "this is a 'Holy War'." This from a man who has taken an oath "above all, do no harm," an open advocacy for the murder of innocent civilians in clear violation of the international rules of war. The doctor apparantly believes that no one but the dead Iraqis would suffer grevous harm by their executions.

• A second letter, this one from a US sailor: "I love ... my freedom. ... I call these people traitors; they call themselves protesters. They are nothing more than an infectious disease that infests the minds and hearts of the Americans ... Traitors should be hanged." Apparently the "freedom" this sailor "loves" does not include free speech, and his wording clearly suggests that he approves of extreme military involvement in civilian policing, long banned under our country's laws in any but the most extreme circumstances. To this sailor however, such conduct is perhaps simply "another day at the office."

Of course, one might just dismiss these two letters as aberations; certainly there are angry people everywhere, but how to explain that these two newspapers chose to publish this advocacy of violence, and totally illegal violence at that? One would expect that a responsible editorial staff would at least cover themselves with a direct statement (as opposed to the one buried in their editorial policy statement) that their choice to publish these letters was not an endorsement of these recomendations, but of course, neither newspaper chose to do so. And so the violence meme becomes louder and more acceptable.

---

AROUND the BLOGS: David Neiwert's "The political and the personal" on this subject (which I've previously linked) has gotten a wonderful reception, being reprinted and linked well over a dozen times. Dave provides two follow-ups on this (here and here) which are well worth reading. --- Avedon Carol comments on an article by Jim Henley in Boiling Frogs at Sideshow. Her caution: Because this is how it starts.

 

Living in South Florida, I had naturally followed many of the stories coming out of the FTAA protests in Miami (photos below), especially the AFL-CIO protests that were marred by an overly-militarized police presence (to say the least). Having experienced similar police militarization during my "Vietnam days", I've come to hate even the sight such police preparations.

On the surface, it is understandable. Out of oftentimes hundreds of thousands of protestors at such gatherings, perhaps only a handful arrive with any violent intent. Still, on those occasions when these few overly-zealous protestors ("bad actors") do succeed in initiating violence, one hardly wants any police officers (or anyone else for that matter) to suffer injury as a result. Hence, the heavy defensive armourment adorned by the police.

The dynamics of crowd control

Still, there are other dynamics that comes into play when crowd control becomes excessively militarized; dynamics of fear. These dynamics of course involve both sides. The police, having been issued such protective equipment by their superiors, clearly understand the message being given from above; these people are dangerous. The protestors, upon seeing such armourment, clearly feel threatened by the display. The intent, of course, is that if each side sufficiently fears the other, a stand-off of sorts will be maintained, and "rational actors" will reject any violence goals. Or so goes the theory.

Of course, people under the stress of fear do not always act as "rational actors", and this is where the problems with over-militarized crowd control occur. With both sides in a naturally "hair trigger" defensive posture, even quite small events can appear distorted and enlarged through this lens of fear. Heavily-armed officers properly attempting to confine a larger-than-expected crowd may appear as attackers to the protestors, and relatively minor altercations within the crowd might appear falsely as the start of a riot to the police.

The "other" dynamic

Yet still, there is another dynamic that comes into play here; the dynamic of overwhelming strength. When two sides are opposed on some issue, both are held in check when each side is allowed to display some comparable advantage over the other. This was the doctrine of "mutually-assured destruction" during the Cold War, and as fearful as that doctrine was, it was nonetheless successful. Each side had its "comparable advantage", and so both kept an arms length distance from each other. It is this very dynamic that breaks however down when the police responsible for crowd control are as militaristically superior to the crowd as they were in Maimi, and indeed as they were at Kent State.

Under this overwhelming strength dynamic, the side possessing it feels little restraint in applying that strength in almost a casual fashion. Meaningless incidents in the crowd become excuses for a show of strength by the police. And this is the danger present in over-militarization of the crowd controllers; that they will use this strength simply because they have it.

Now it is not my intent to bash the Miami police here, though certainly some of their actions went way over what was reasonable. But we must understand that not only are "bad actors" allowed into the protesting group, but they are also present within the controlling group. Neither group has any realistic ability to bar bad actors from their numbers, though both groups do indeed try.

The word from Miami

The protests are over, but already some Miami news pundits are calling for their civic leaders to conduct inquiries regarding police brutality during them. This would seem to be proper and I would certainly support that, but I can hardly imagine that any such investigation would be effective. Buried forever in my mind is that photo from Kent State. [For any who might not remember, it was a heavily-militarized Nation Guard unit that fired on student protestors, killing four of them.] There were inquiries held back then also, but no one was ever charged in these deaths, and no one recieved even a reprimand.

Follow the money

Though I followed the protests themselves, I was somewhat lax in following the subsequent commentary. Avedon Carol at The Sideshow points out one of my omissions:

With the activists recast as dangerous aliens, Miami became eligible for the open tap of public money irrigating the "war on terror". In fact, $8.5m spent on security during the FTAA meeting came out of the $87bn Bush extracted from Congress for Iraq last month.

This is outlandish. The American public was outraged by the $87 billion recent authorization, but properly felt trapped. But this this money was supposed to go to Iraq (and to a much lesser extent, Afghanistan), so how did it end up in Miami being used against protesters of our financial foreign policies?

The answer is fairly simple: Miami wanted help, and the Bush administration diverted funds to provide it; funds that led to the overmilitarization of the Miami response to the protests. We did not intend that the $87 billion be used to supress free speach in America, but the Bush administration clearly played fast and loose with our money. What we believed to be necessary money for our troops in Iraq was actually diverted for rubber bullets shot at our own citizens.

An investigation?

This is where any investigation should start. Certainly the civic leaders in Miami would take any federal monies offered to defray their costs. The alternative would be to tax their own constituents for the police costs of the FTAA meeting. Given that they were given literally a blank check, and given that the Miami respose was an over-militarization, the investigation should start with those who wrote that check. And that kind of investigation will not come out of the check's recipient.

And as Avedon suggests, write your congessmen if this sort of stuff bothers you as much as it does me.