by Scott Creighton
They estimate that they have trained over 100,000 service members and police officers in their special brand of customer relations; what I call “fear and loathing” of the general population. It is a form of urban control and tactical combat that seems to be a cross section of “shock and awe” and Israeli opposition repression, perfected on streets that were once Palestinian and on countless Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.
You see, it seems that Palestinians don’t like it when an Israeli tries to use a Caterpillar bulldozer to level their homes, so, they need to be neutralized quickly by specially trained squads, so a little family resistance doesn’t grow into an outright riot. That’s where the “shock and awe” comes in; an immediate show of intimidating and overwhelming force to “achieve rapid dominance” of any situation.
It used to be that local police departments were trained to serve and protect based on the restrictions laid out in the Constitution. To be safe, as well as legal. But since “everything changed” on 9/11, total submission seems to be the first goal of law enforcement when dealing with the public.
You would think this odd, until you really look at the source. These tactics are being employed everyday in Iraq and Palestine to much success. Mistreating, endangering, and humiliating “suspects” right off the bat is a much safer approach to any given situation when you don’t know what the “suspect” is capable of. That is, it’s safer for the armed officer wearing flack jackets and jack boots. It seems to increase the chances of injury for everyone else, though.
The problem lies in the fact that these are tactics being perfected by illegally occupying forces in “hostile territory” or what could be called “someone else’s nation”. It’s a well known fact that forces in situations like these are usually trained with an emphasis on the de-humanization of the occupied. It wouldn’t serve the greater good to have the troops empathizing with the local inhabitants. Pretty soon you start getting questions from the ranks about the mission objectives, and that doesn’t help overall goal of the occupation.
But now, we can thank Blackwater Global for bringing these marvelous tools home to US soil. And they get paid well for their efforts. In fact, thanks to all the Homeland Security funding, the average tax-payer gets to foot the bill while Eric Prince, a young Republican with strong ties to Focus on the Family who inherited his fathers hand built business and then immediately sold it to fund the start-up Blackwater, gets richer and richer from his DOD corporate welfare checks.
But at least we can take solace in the fact that Prince has to spend a fortune on lawyers and Jack Abramofff’s old PR firm, to clean up that little mess in Iraq where his specially trained mercenaries killed 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians.
Maybe after a couple of the family members of the slaughtered civilians extract a couple million from Mr. Prince, he might think to start training his mercs to be a little more respectful of the indigenous population. But probably not. Because some backroom deal will be cut between Prince and some up-and-coming politicians that want re-election funding and you and I will pay the price again through our tax dollars or the tax dollars yet to be paid by our children and their children.
And Focus on the Family rolls on with charitable donations from Iraqi blood money. Blessed are the meek, indeed.
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