Boomerang effect: how the imperial wars turned the US into a police state
Mission Truth
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Jun 4 · 7 min read
By Rebeca Monsalve
Police use automatic weapons and military equipment to contain the protests in Ferguson, USA, 2014. Photo: AP / Jeff Roberson
The brutal killing of an African American by police in Minneapolis has prompted President Donald Trump to threaten to take military troops to the streets in American cities, not because it somehow reverses the widespread violence by police forces against civilians, especially with the lower social strata and " racial minorities ".
On the contrary: under the protection of the Insurrection Act of 1807, Trump intends to deploy the army to repress protesters who have been on the streets for more than a week. The Pentagon has reacted against this measure, but Trump insists on executing it.
Although these protests and riots do not stem exclusively from discrimination against the black community in the United States, the federal government's disproportionate military response is not an isolated event.
Police violence against the African-American community is a historical relationship in the United States. Photo: Julio Cortez / AP Photo
The "endless wars" of Washington in the Middle East, framed in the plans to reshape the region in favor of its interests with the excuse of the "fight against terrorism" after September 11, 2001, have been decisive in the social crisis and economic that suffers the population of the country.
Militarization of the American police
"Many Americans first learned of the 1033 Program in 2014, when both peaceful protests and destructive riots erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, following the fatal Michael Brown police shooting," says Bonnie Kristian, in an article written in Responsible Statecraft. , a publication of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
This Department of Defense program provides security officers with weapons of war: "bayonets, automatic rifles, and grenade launchers, as well as ammunition, bulletproof vests, robots, ships, and aircraft, including surveillance drones."
The increasing and invasive use of the state of permanent vigilance , today expressed in the use of police intelligence to detect and quell protests with sophisticated data collection technologies, deserves special attention, journalist Bonnie Kristian points out .
But beyond the war arsenal (surplus of the military invasions in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria), or the espionage instruments that reach the hands of the officers, it is necessary to observe the culture of repression that has been forged in the academies Police, very much in line with the vision of foreign policy conceived in the White House.
As soon as they give a signal to threaten the US establishment , the civilian population becomes a threat to national security.
Protest in the US against a possible war with Iran in early 2020. Photo: AFP
There is not a clear denunciation of the imperialist vision of the United States or of the conflicts unleashed abroad, which in the end are causing internal decline.
Rather, the chaos and riots seem like a visceral response to the social and economic decline of a country led by a bipartisan elite that is busier trying to sustain hegemonic power in the world, funding costly armies and hundreds of military bases, in one state. of perpetual war.
Being considered a "threat" to the population in the United States, it receives the same treatment that is given to nations that hinder Gringo hegemony.
And in that scenario, police departments are trained to behave like an occupying force. “If the officers are soldiers, it follows that the neighborhoods they patrol are battlegrounds. And if they are working on the battlefields, it follows that the population is the enemy, "reflected the writer of The Concourse , Greg Howard, during the Ferguson demonstrations in 2014, and who is quoted by Kristian.
Military spending and debt to residents
George Floyd was unemployed when he was captured and killed by officers upon receiving a complaint against him for forgery of a $ 20 bill . Floyd was also infected with coronavirus, as the full autopsy report revealed .
Since Covid-19 rose to a pandemic category and has focused the attention of governments and agencies worldwide, the unemployment rate in the United States could reach 25%, while virus-related infections and deaths have grown chilling: more than 1 million 900 thousand cases and more than 100 thousand deaths .
Health is not a priority in the cradle of financial capitalism, nor is the pockets of the middle and lower classes. But war, the basis that sustains the economic power of Washington, yes it is, and that is why there is nothing strange in the military spending of the federal government, although this does not guarantee it will return to the glory days of a unipolar world. .
The military defense (attack) spending that goes to the Pentagon is around 740 billion dollars annually. Adjusting for inflation differences, that budget is said to be higher than "President Ronald Reagan's defense, built to win the Cold War ."
However, this value is not a complete expression of the waste in resources to feed the military-industrial complex, where government and the private sector are amalgamated, in this last century of conflicts in the Middle East.
According to Willis Krumholz, a member of Defense Priorities , "without counting the cost of the Department of Homeland Security, the total cost of these wars has been more than $ 5 trillion since 2001. That is 25% of our national debt."
It should not be forgotten that the United States has a public debt that exceeds 100% of its GDP .
The countries that lead the multipolar bloc, China and Russia, have a military expenditure of 250 billion dollars and 60 billion dollars a year, respectively.
There are no indications of massive protests claiming that this distribution jeopardizes the security of the population in their territories, or that of others abroad, no matter how much the Western media construct false reports that cover the dimensions of the US military actions.
US Marines in a confrontation with the Taliban in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Photo: Reuters
"The United States is now committed to endless war, and endless interventionism, signaling any fuel situation anywhere in the world," writes international relations analyst Akhilesh Pillalamarri.
It is the permanent attack on Arab oil-producing countries, but so are the sanctions against Iran, the trade and cultural war against China, indirect clashes against Russia attacking its allies, or systematic harassment of Venezuela's institutions, paying coup plans or maintaining the blockade on its economy.
They are foreign interventions that have been invariable to the changes of administration of the last century. American think tanks, such as the Cato Institute, point to the urgency of " moderating " this doctrine of uncontrolled wars, demonstrating its unsustainability in the medium term.
American war veterans have been abandoned by Washington. Photo: Umair Haque
Perhaps it would not have greater importance if the blows outwards were not being felt with almost the same intensity indoors. Last century, with the Korean War of the 1950s, the Vietnam War of the 1960s, invasions in Guatemala, Vietnam, Panama and Granada, bombings in Yugoslavia, Washington always found a way to justify military occupations under supposed national ends.
These foreign conflicts, all questionable, costly and without any revenue for the American majority, were out of sight of the gringo society. Not so the consequences that were accumulating in the country's own political and social situation, and which are now bursting between viruses, economic-social crisis and police terrorism.
Photo: CNN
The resources that the military defense devours to achieve this objective are those that Americans no longer perceive in goods as fundamental as health.
Household spending went into building oppressive structures that are now experiencing their prime time cracking down on protests, which seem to come out of the fragile grip the federal government had a few weeks ago, as outside doors Washington continues to pose as the world's police, less credible than a few years ago.
The White House has shown that the elite's agenda is above any citizen's needs or claims, regardless of whether Donald Trump is in charge or a representative of the Democratic wing in power.
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As hideous as the prez is we should always put him in the context of capitalism and never be surrogates of Democratic partisan weaseling, like WSWS. Trump is not only the capitalists' avatar but the class's caricature too.