The purpose of the military of any nation is purportedly to defend the nation from external attacks. But an important other function is to protect the oligarchy from its own people and time after time this has been the experience of many countries, with the military being used to crush its own people’s legitimate aspirations for freedom and democracy.
Sometime ago, I wrote about the dangerous trend of the paramilitarization of the police in the US so that they have begun to look more like the military and use military tactics against civilians. Via BoingBoing, I tried my hand at this quiz created by Radley Balko showing 21 photographs and asking the viewer to identify whether the people shown were police or the military. I got just 11 correct, which was what one would expect by random chance, which is not surprising since I was forced to guess on almost all of them, they look so alike.
In the US, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 was enacted to prevent the government from using the military for civilian police work. The barriers in that act have been steadily eroded over the last three decades and the recently enacted National Defense Authorization Act that was rushed through Congress with no hearings and little debate and signed by president Obama on New Year’s eve pretty much gutted it.
Why do this now? I have my suspicions that the oligarchy has a real fear of mass unrest if the economic conditions for most Americans worsen and sees the Tea Party and Occupy movements as precursors to a major challenge to its rule. They want to have all the tools at their disposal if there is a danger of things spinning out of control.
A year ago I might have said you were paranoid; today I am not so sure.
I got 18 of 21 on the quiz. The clue I used was the headgear. The soldiers were generally wearing the so-called fritz helmet with camouflage cover while the cops were usually wearing a similar but subtly different helmet without a cover.
I got 15 out of 21, but only because I noticed a difference in the helmets after question 8. The site said the score was “good.” To this day I agree with George Carlin when it comes to the po-lice, and I’m white. I can barely imagine what it would be like if I weren’t operating from that privileged position. I’d probably be in prison.
The difference is this:
American soldiers are people paid to torture and kill other countries’ citizens, mowing them down regardless of any aggression on the part of the hapless citizens.
American cops are soldiers paid to torture and kill their own fellow citizens, mowing them down regardless of any aggression on the part of the hapless citizens.
And maybe we shouldn’t be calling ourselves “citizens” for that implies we belong to a civilized society. Judging by the trends, I don’t see the survival of even this veneer of civilization past another thirty years, at the most. I fear so much for my baby niece -- what sort of a life will she be living by the time she’s an adult?