The Global War on Terrorism
"Global" includes the "homeland" here in America
There's an important point about America’s Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) that people often miss.
When the Bush/Cheney administration announced the GWOT after 9/11, I think nearly all Americans assumed that "global" meant everywhere but the "good" countries. That global meant the axis of evil (Iraq, Iran, North Korea) and similar so-called bad actors, but that it didn't mean countries like Canada -- and certainly not the U.S. homeland.
But global really did mean everywhere on earth as we've watched the war on terror escalate domestically. The U.S. government/security state has built the foundation and superstructure for a permanent war on terror, and it simply isn't going to go away. The Iraq and Afghan wars are essentially over (both lost), and fears of North Korea have subsided as the military-industrial-congressional complex focuses on Ukraine, Russia, and China, but the GWOT continues. It's now turned inwards, within and along our own borders, and those techniques that were practiced (if not perfected) in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere are now being used and inflicted upon ordinary Americans who are attempting to resist state-corporate authoritarianism.
The GWOT has come home -- but perhaps it's always been here. What’s changed is how state-corporate entities can define almost any form of determined protest—even civil and nonviolent ones—as "terror." Labeling someone a “domestic terrorist” gives state-corporate actors a whole host of powerful ways to punish activists, notes by Michael Gould-Wartofsky at TomDispatch.com.
At the same time, America has witnessed the “rise of the warrior-cop,” as Radley Balko noted in his book by that title.
Three years ago, I wrote about the militarization of police forces at TomDispatch. This is what I wrote then:
America’s violent overseas wars, thriving for almost two decades despite their emptiness, their lack of meaning, have finally and truly come home. An impoverished empire, in which violence and disease are endemic, is collapsing before our eyes. “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” America’s self-styled wartime president [Donald Trump] promised, channeling a racist Miami police chief from 1967. It was a declaration meant to turn any American who happened to be near a protest into a potential victim
As such demonstrations proliferate, Americans now face a grim prospect: the chance to be wounded or killed, then dismissed as “collateral damage.” In these years, that tried-and-false military euphemism has been applied so thoughtlessly to innumerable innocents who have suffered grievously from our unending foreign wars and now it’s coming home.
A few days ago, The Onion, a satirical news site, compared America’s obedience and passivity to power to the current situation in France. Here’s how they put it:
In an ongoing struggle against ruling-class oppression, the people of France again protested in a way that Americans are welcome to at any time, sources confirmed Thursday. According to reports, French citizens across the country were spotted hitting the streets en masse as a unified front against the institutional bondage that seeks to subjugate them while never failing to apply forceful pressure every time injustice strikes, which Americans can and should feel free to do whenever they so choose.
Yes, but are Americans truly “welcome” to protest “whenever they so choose”? We’d like to think so, especially as July 4th approaches (America! Land of the Free!), but who wants to be detained and thrown in jail for domestic terrorism? Anyone in America hankering to be labeled as a terrorist by the state, whether on the right or left of the political spectrum, even if the charge is eventually dismissed?
Remember those innocent days of the 1960s when for some the police were “pigs” and the protesters were “bums” (Richard Nixon’s word for the students killed at Kent State)? Now those protesters could be charged with domestic terrorism even as various heavily armed enforcers of the law would likely be celebrated (consider all those “blue lives matter” flags, for example).
Remember when “defund the police” was briefly a thing? By which people meant less funding for militarized police forces and more for mental health services and the like. President Joe Biden and the Democrats realized any serious effort to restrain police power would leave them open to charges of being soft on crime, so Biden and the party simply declared: Fund the police. (Republicans concur, of course, even as they still accuse Biden and the Dems of being soft on crime.)
And there you have it. Fund the police at all levels, local, state, and federal, and grant them the kind of powers given to America’s “warriors” in the GWOT. Set them loose on all of America’s domestic “terrorists.” After all, the GWOT went so well in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and elsewhere. Surely it will go equally well in the Homeland. Right?
Addendum: In writing this, I came across a superb article by Patricia McCormick at the Washington Post on Mary Ann Vecchio, “the girl in the Kent State photo.” She was just 14 when the above photo was taken. She paid a high price, as the article recounts. Letters to her family accused her of being a “drug addict,” a “tramp,” or a “communist.” The then-governor of Florida suggested she was a “professional agitator” and therefore responsible for the students’ deaths. A Gallup poll back then, cited by McCormick, said that 58% of Americans blamed the students at Kent State and only 11% blamed the National Guardsmen who opened fire and killed the four students.
“Professional agitator” sounds much like today’s domestic terrorist. And let’s reflect on those 58% of Americans who believed the students at Kent State were responsible for their own deaths. How dare they block the free flight of “Made in USA” bullets with their young bodies? The “bums”! (“Domestic terrorists.”)
It is here in Georgia where the state apparatus is aggressively using the charge of "domestic terrorism" to stop and undermine any resistance to the new "training facility," better known as Cop City. The legal system is charging anyone who protests in any manner or who supports in any manner the effort to stop the construction of the roughly $100 million facility (you can bet on cost overruns) with "domestic terrorism." Already, this totally unnecessary waste of resources has resulted in the clear cutting of 85 acres of virgin forest that used to act as the lungs of the Atlanta metro area, a crime in itself. All the major politicians in Georgia, from Democratic city mayor Andrew Dickens to Republican governor Brian Kemp, are united, as are all major politicians at the national level in pursuing the proxy war in Ukraine. All the major corporations in Georgia (Home Depot, Amazon, Coca-Cola, Bank of America, etc.) also support Cop City and, therefore, by extension, support charging any and all protestors as "domestic terrorists." If this were done in any other country, say, for example Russia or China or Cuba, you can be damn sure that the US propaganda machine would be working 24/7 to denounce such countries as authoritarian and anti-democratic, claiming that such countries prevent their citizens from exercising their civil rights. Ah, but as usual, and just like with US foreign policy, the double standard goes unchallenged and the mainstream media just regurgitates what those in power say. For a very long time I have argued that US foreign policy can be easily summed up in only 8 words. Now, unfortunately, we can add US homeland policy as well. Both are driven by a very clear and unequivocal dictum: Do as we say, not as we do.
Spot on. I would point people to a seemingly arcane way the government is waging this domestic war on “terrorism” against its own citizens. That way is the hoary idea of creating a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). I know, eyes glaze over stuff, and usually explained as necessary in ways many progressives are inclined to accept (I will forgo the economic damage this will do). Yet, what the government is doing is gathering up control of your spending with the ability to shut off that spending if you act in “irresponsible” ways.
We saw this when Canada shut off payments from those supporting the truckers protests last year (it does not matter if you agree with these protests or not). The government, in the name of terror, with a thin veneer of Keynesian economics, is moving to a system of social credits, much like “archnemesis” China. This will encompass not only political activities, but potentially diet and health choices, as well as environmentally “friendly” consumer choices. The totality of the potential state control of our lives is staggering.
So, I would ask people to pay attention to the arcane, it is often in such dry, eyes glaze over topics that the government does its most damage. Peace.