Beyond real political people like General McChrystal and President Obama, Americans' fascination with killers is clear from just a cursory survey of popular culture. Everywhere, in films, in popular books on the grocery store shelves and in video games, there's an obsession with hit men, serial killers, sexual psychopaths and government agents with a license to kill; popular killers range from those in an underground, criminal world to those wearing badges and working under the lethal rights granted by national sovereign.
There's Lawrence Block's lovable hit man Keller who knocks people off between trips to stamp-collector shops, the swimming pool and other mundane tasks his middle-class readers can identify with. There's Dexter, the lovable serial killer who offs only scum of the earth we're glad to see eliminated. And there's Jake Grafton, Steven Koonts' CIA agent in The Assassin, who hunts down al Qaeda demons -- as do a hundred others in the same genre within a genre.
Then there's Keith Hayward in Peter Straub's macabre gem of a novella A Special Place: The Heart of a Dark Matter. Hayward is actually a very unpleasant character. He starts out as a 12-year-old killing local cats. His Uncle Till, who likes to kill women with a knife, recognizes his nephew's talents and trains him in the discipline of killing so he can safely fulfill his true potential. As I was reading Straub's dark little fairy tale I couldn't help but wonder if Keith Hayward had the discipline to enter the realm of sovereign killing and to become a special ops killer for America. Again, some may see this as a cheap shot at our national heroes of the moment; I'm not sure.
At this juncture, I should say I'm not a pacifist and, to be perfectly candid, when the luxury of personal security is lifted I think I'd agree some people may need killing. (I apologize to all my pacifist friends.) But this only shifts the argument from the act of killing to the question who is one killing and why. In the case of the US government, when it comes to the combined War On Terror and the Drug War, there's a clear, on-going history of intervention, invasion and occupation that provokes people to oppose us with violence, which means killing them is only exacerbating the problem and making more enemies to kill later. The process of violence is a vicious cycle with no end, as Martin Luther King so eloquently pointed out before he was assassinated.
When the Englishman D.H. Lawrence describes the American soul as "hard, isolate, stoic and a killer," he doesn't include as a trait a devotion to history. No. History is something too many Americans like to avoid at all costs -- unless like "remember the Alamo!" it can be used to mobilize an army for purposes of homicidal revenge. History that digs in and explains the American soul is like a ball and chain. Better to remain ignorant, or as Susan Sontag put it after 9/11: "By all means let's mourn together, but let's not be stupid together." Sadly, the American leaders at the time and the American mob all chose to be stupid.
Add to this volatile cultural stew the polarization of fundamentalist religion and the promotional power of the National Rifle Association and pretty soon you're back to the wild west where everybody feels they have the need, and the right, to solve their problems lethally. It's not only your right -- it's your duty -- to stand your ground with a .40 caliber Glock.
Military/Police Symbiosis
The anxiety I feel today is exactly what Raymond Chandler alluded to in the epigram at the top, about "a world in which gangsters can rule nations." The militarization of the police inside the US is a perfect example of this.
The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 makes it illegal to use Army units within the domestic United States. (The Air Force was added to the act in 1956.) The militarization of police forces, on the other hand, has no such brake.
It's interesting to look at the issue as a hemisphere problem. In Latin America, the overlap between military and police forces has been notoriously problematic, with many instances of human rights abuses. US military trainers are now being deployed to places like Honduras to train the police and the military; and one of the things they preach is the separation of military and police functions. It's ironic that those very separations are breaking down here in North America. We're becoming more like Latin America as they become more like us.
"The Salvador option" was the informal name given to General McChrystal's Special Operations "death squads" in Anbar Province in Iraq. In El Salvador such units were referred to as "paramilitary." My dictionary defines "para-" as "distinct from, but analogous to."
Recently, York County, Pennsylvania, purchased a $296,000 up-armored Lenco Bearcat for its SWAT Team; the funds came from cash and property seized from drug dealers. This kind of self-aggrandizing spoils system is notorious in police forces across the nation. The more property confiscated, the more sophisticated military equipment and weapons a department can buy. The problem is, if you buy a tank you naturally want to use it. The more military equipment and training you get, the more you will become a paramilitary unit -- "distinct from, but analogous to" a military unit.
There's also a vast network of associations and training enterprises that reinforce the militarization of local police forces. An article in the Spring issue of the National Tactical Officers Association's magazine The Tactical Edge specifically addresses the military/police relationship. It's a review of a book called Field Command by Charles "Sid" Heal.
"The book is a first of its kind," reviewer John Gnagey writes. "The concepts and principles are taken from tactical texts and military field manuals but are presented in scenarios that commonly confront law enforcement officers." The book is divided into sections: At the Scene, Understanding and Developing Strategy, Command Staff, Planning and Decision Making and Multi-Dimensional Battlespace.
In the early fifties, I recall my mom literally telling me police officers were my friend. Those days are gone -- if they were ever anything more than perception. It's now an entrenched war of gangs on the streets of America, with the police being the most powerful gang. And police thinkers are using terms like "counter-insurgency" and "battlespace" to talk about policing the streets of America.
Like any civilian caught in the middle of a dangerous warzone, it's becoming less a matter of right and wrong, and more a matter of prudently choosing sides to cover your ass.
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