On July 21, 2014, I met Monique Hamburger and she told me about an article she had just written: a short piece that reflected on the trend to facilitate the deployment of the armed forces within the territory of what once were liberal democracies -- countries like Britain, France, the US, Germany, or Spain. All of these countries have already seen various governments succumb to the temptations of power, by opting in favor of a surveillance state and security state. A state that in fact makes citizens more insecure while making those elected more secure in their arrogance that they do not have to listen to the majority of the population, and that they do not have to keep the well-being of the population at heart.

It is not a nice idea that we are paying, with out taxes, for our own disempowerment as citizens, and that millions and millions of tax dollars and endless working hours of public employees who could accomplish more beneficial and truly useful tasks are wasted in order to collect the most trivial, but also the most private information on us.

While our smartphones, the ipad, ipod, digital television set, modern electrical oven and refrigerator, the electronically monitored central heating, the smartmeter that is said to simply measure the minute-by-minute (or second-by-second) fluctuations of our water consumption, but also our credit card and the black box in our car keep track of whatever we do, when, where, and for how long (and with whom, in many cases, as well), the intransparency of big government and big business increases from year to year.

And the media? Many just rock us and sing us to sleep. Which newspaper informed you, dear reader, about the fact that between 2006 and 2013, the local police in the United States received ninety-three thousand seven hundred and sixty-three machines guns? 93,763 weapons you would need in a civil war!  Which newspaper, which television station told you that the U.S. army sold five hundred and thirty-three of its planes and helicopters to local police authorities? What for, I beg you? 

The planes our police forces got are military planes -- so-called "surplus tools of combat" that became dispensible for the army after troops returned from the illegal war in Iraq. A war that was justified, as it were, by George W. Bush's lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Those weapons did never threaten us because -- as the American government later admitted -- they didn't exist. But now the soldiers that fought and killed in Iraq are no longer needed there, and surplus weapons become a commodity that must be sold and provide cash for the Pentagon. 

In the last seven years, the American government sold local authorities military weapons worth 1.4 billion US-dollars. Imagine that! How much soup we could have handed out to those 40 million Americans who go hungry day by day -- all those called "food insecure," by the bureaucrats! How many missed mortgages payments could have been possible with timely loans, during the long economic crisis we are dealing with. How many families might have been spared a sad experience -- that of homelessness, of being forced to sleep in cars, or under bridges, or in tents pitched by the riverside. 

They say the army has to get rid of all those weapons. The army considers them dispensible.  Aren't these weapons dispensible at home, too? Do our police officers really need them? Against whom? Against an unarmed  Black American teenager who wants to surrender to the police? Against peacefully demonstrating, yet angry citizens who conduct a sit-in in a city that is facing an invasion of militarily armed police, SWAT teams,  and national guard -- sent by whom? For what? To FRIGHTEN THE PEOPLE? To KEEP THEM FROM EXPRESSING THEIR ANGER AND THEIR OPPOSITION TO PRACTICES THAT AMOUNT TO THE COLD-BLOODED, UNMOTIVATED TAKING OF HUMAN LIVES? Justified, again, by lies? 

Whom should we trust, while in God we trust? 

Those who lied and lied again? 

Yes, we trust the fire department and we thought we could trust the police. It's a long, long time since we last trusted most politicians in Washington. But we want them, nonetheless, to answer our questions. Who is your enemy when you equip local police forces with military hardware worth 1.4 billion dollars? We, the people? Have we voted our enemies into office? WHO ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU UP TO?

We HAVE DISCOVERED that THERE ARE FEW AMONG YOU who are still  ON OUR SIDE.
Ron Paul, yes. And Dennis Kucinich. Congressman Wyden, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson Jr., and a handful of others. What about the rest? Who among you backed that sale of hardware? You, Mr. President? Is that the CHANGE you talked about? A change towards an internally militarized America -- because you're external enemies don't suffice?

Don't tell us you expect them to come here to do a lousy job of murder and terrorism. For all we know, our troops have killed a-plenty abroad. And --  sadly --  torture, drone assissinations, reckless killing of families, including children, by brutalized American soldiers entering their living room were part of the story. And it still continues. Can we expect something of the sort at home in the times ahead, those times that are a-changing for the worse?

We have seen a brutal police officer kneel on the helpless body of an old, homeless Black American woman.

We have witnessed a cop shoot a cripple in a wheelchair, a man who had just one arm and one leg left. 

Is that the new American way? Perhaps it is the old American way. The striking miners at Cripple Creek, Colorado, back in the days of Mother Jones, found out what security forces are capable of. The demonstrators assembling in Haymarket, in the windy city, were taught a lesson, too. It did not help them to be conscious of their democratic rights, eager to oppose America's entrance in a war between imperialist powers, a war between countries in Europe -- all equally vain in their competitive eagerness to plunder the rest of the world.  And weren't the four civil rights workers, Medgar Evers, and the others, left unprotected by sheriffs in Mississippi who saw what was going to happen to them?  And yet, one these so-called servants of the people did nothing, except, we know, aid the assassins, complicit, as we know now, in a Ku Klux Klan plot... And then, Kent State. Isn't that a telling example of the good use our governments could make of the PROUD National Guard? But what are they proud of? Of their ability to shoot at unarmed college students? Shoot to kill -- was that the order? And covered up with lies, and by ordering evidence to be hidden from the public for so many years? 

And so we demand an answer. Tell us, Mr. President, tell us, Mr. Hagel,  tell us, all you Congreswomen and Congressmen, WHY did our mayors and police chiefs -- by law the servants of the people -- buy, for internal use in our cities, four hundred thirty-two mine-resistant Ambush protected armored vehicles from the army, since 2006?  And WHY did you okay the sale, and perhaps push for it?

Which LIES will they offer us to justify that strange decision? It is with derision, it seems, that our public servants in high office view provisions in the Constitution, rulings, posse comitatus.

You ordered the Air Force TO CONDUCT A RAID IN LAS VEGAS, OR AT LEAST MADE IT POSSIBLE, MR. PRESIDENT - by changing the rules.

Why? What are you up to? Which story are you going to tell us, to dispel our worries and put us to sleep?

Yes, those who are not put to sleep remember the government's lies about the reason for expanding the war in Vietnam. The American government invented the Gulf of Tonking affair -- a fake thing, a shabby public relations effort -- and then used that to justify more killing. But it was good for business, good for the arms-makers. 

Then the government  cheated and lied about the Iran-Contra affair. 

They lied about Iraq, about Afghanistan. REMEMBER THE ROEMERBERG TALKS: Remember your threats made to the Afghan diplomats. Either Unocal gets the pipeline contract or you will regret it, they were informed. They refused. A little later, there was the tragedy in New York -- a dark, bitter event, we wish you would not keep us in the dark about. And then -- there was the war. First, in Afghanistan. Then, in Iraq. All justified by a president who smiled, contently, it seemed to some of us, when he went on television for the first time after the tragic event.

Can we trust such people -- who invent reasons for wars abroad, and who plan for the worst at home?

And why, we beg you, tell us were four hundred thirty-two mine-resistant Ambush protected armored vehicle not enough for use by local police in these United States? Why did they need another four hundred thirty-five armored army vehicles, cars as well as trucks? Why do our local police units need in these United States both mine-resistant vehicles and other armored cars, and in fact more than 800 of them? 

AND WHY DO THEY NEED OTHER NEW WEAPONS, FROM SONIC WEAPONS AND WATER CANNONS TO TASERS AND TEAR-GAS GRENADES? 

WE ARE TOLD THAT THESE WEAPONS  ARE CROWD CONTROL WEAPONS. BUT WHICH CROWD DO YOU WANT TO CONTROL? US - THE PEOPLE?

Seems that we will have to talk to all the good, sensible police officers -- people like Ron Johnson, of the highway patrol unit in St. Louis. You know. these guys are THE PEOPLE, TOO. The ones you fear. One point four billion dollars, that's a lot of money spent above and beyond what you normally spent on internal security. But nohing is normal anymore. Military equipment for local police was never normal. Seems that those who run the government, though elected by us, have forgotten their duty, and their obligation to the people. If so, their fear is justified. If so, they have become, unnoticed by us, enemies of the people.
 
 

- Jacob Hauser
 
 
 

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