Liberty.me publisher Jeffrey Tucker interviewed me today about the history of Antiwar.com, our mission and why we do what we do.
The New York Times has a good story today headlined, “War Gear Flows to Police Departments.” Unfortunately, the Pentagon’s leftovers have been corrupting domestic law enforcement since the 1990s. Following is a piece I wrote for Playboy in 2000 on the militarization of SWAT teams. The article includes a discussion of Waco and the 1999 high school shootings in Littleton, Colorado.
Playboy March, 2000
FLASH. BANG. YOU’RE DEAD : SWAT teams make dramatic TV but horrible justice; the increase in the number of SWAT teams has led to violent, and sometimes misguided, justice
By James Bovard
When University of Texas student Charles Whitman climbed the Texas Tower in 1966 and began shooting people, the Austin police were caught underarmed. Officials called in off-duty cops and asked for citizens to bring their deer rifles. TV footage showed puffs of concrete as cops’ return fire chipped away at the sniper’s position. Eventually, officers climbed the stairs to the observatory deck and patrolman Ramiro Martinez emptied his handgun into the suspect. Then, seizing a shotgun from a fellow officer, he finished the job.
The well-publicized shootings provided the pretext for many police departments to gear up for war and changed both the weaponry and tactics of law enforcement.
Police chief Daryl Gates launched the nation’s first Special Weapons and Tactics team in Los Angeles in 1971. Gates’ unit became famous for demolishing homes with tanks that were equipped with battering rams. Law enforcement went on steroids and became larger than life.
Antiwar.com editorial director Justin Raimondo spoke today with Fox Radio’s Alan Colmes about the Bowe Bergdahl case.
Justin was at his best, check it out:
This is the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy. It is a great blessing that western Europe is now at peace – regardless of how much political leaders squabble at the commemoration ceremony. D-Day back in the news reminds me of my first visit to World War Two venues.
In 1977, after dropping out of college, I hustled up the money to take off for a two-month hitchhiking tour of Europe. After landing and spending five days in Paris, I headed to the city’s western suburbs to catch a ride to Normandy.
Like most American kids in the 1960s, I loved TV series on World War Two – from Combat to Rat Patrol to Hogan’s Heroes. I was also transfixed by movies like “The Longest Day” (1962) and “Is Paris Burning?” (1966). I hoped to visit the landing sites, especially Omaha Beach – where the fiercest fighting took place on June 6.
But the hitching went badly. Perhaps French drivers were appalled by my use of a loaf of French bread to try to flag down a ride – like a giant thumb. (I avoided that flourish later in the summer when hitching in south France.) After several hours of strikeouts, I caught a ride with a trucker going to Le Havre, a port city fairly distant from the famous landing beaches. I had long since exhausted my meager French vocabulary, so I caught a boat to Southampton.
After five years of captivity in Afghanistan, has Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl been released only to spend the rest of his life in an American prison? Ron Paul wonders what it would be like if we had non-interventionist foreign policy. We haven’t had a Constitutional declaration of war since World War II. What if we had had no wars since then? Not only would it have saved countless lives in this war and those before it, but Americans prosperity would be intact. We wouldn’t have a VA health care crisis, since there would be so few veterans in need of attention. And some of the most warlike of cable TV’s talking heads would have nothing to talk about. Charles Goyette talks with Ron Paul on their Weekly Podcast about the strange case of Bowe Bergdahl.
Charles Goyette is New York Times Bestselling Author of The Dollar Meltdown and Red and Blue and Broke All Over: Restoring America’s Free Economy. Check out Goyette and Paul’s national radio commentary: Ron Paul’s America and the Ron Paul and Charles Goyette Weekly Podcast. Goyette also edits The Freedom and Prosperity Letter.
“Assad’s days are numbered” – President Obama, February 2012
Living in denial is the easiest way to avoid hard truths, but it’s a horrible way for a government to conduct foreign policy. Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry recently scoffed at the elections in Syria, calling them “meaningless.” The U.S. media obediently agreed, while the rest of the world drew a much more realistic opinion. It’s true that an election during an ongoing conflict isn’t ideal for democracy, but the deeper truths exposed by the election were completely ignored by the US government and media.
Interestingly, few governments or media outlets doubted the Syrian election was fair for those who were able to vote. There were no large-scale allegations of fraud, and the numbers announced by the government were not seriously contested.
The results of the election weren’t a surprise to anyone familiar with Syrian domestic politics. Russian Television points out the two most obvious reasons Assad’s victory was assured:
1) The president never lost the support of his core constituencies – the Syrian armed forces, the government and business elite, the major cities, the minorities (Christians, Druze, Alawites, Shia, etc.) and secular Sunni (most of the 3 million members of the Baath Party are Sunni).
2) The opposition was fundamentally unable to present a cohesive front and a common political platform – this includes both domestic and external opponents – let alone rally behind a single candidate.
While ignoring these clear truths, John Kerry attempted to justify his characterization of the election as “meaningless,” by adding “…you can’t have an election where millions of your people don’t even have an ability to vote.”
Kerry’s point, although true, would hold greater weight if not for the fact that the Syrian Government controls all but one major city in Syria. Most of the Syrian rebel strength is in the less populated rural areas.
Therefore, it’s quite meaningful that 73 percent of eligible voters went to the polls and that 88 percent of them voted for Assad. Eleven out of 15 million apparently voted. And although one could likely poke further holes in the electoral process, the general sentiment in Syria found expression, the meaning of which was accepted by most of the world.
