Maybe Elian Gonzalez will have achieved a miracle after all, alerting
mainstream America to the fact that the Bill of Rights have disappeared,
restrictions on the role of the military in domestic affairs have been
thrown overboard, and all the appurtenances of a police state are in place.
Twenty-five years after the war ended in Vietnam, we see what happened when
that war came home. We lost abroad. And at home, we've lost, too.
For blacks and Hispanics, the reactions to that famous photograph of the
Elian snatch by the INS team have been comic in a macabre sort of way. After
all, they've been putting up with these no-knock forcible entries by heavily
armed cops or INS agents for decades. On the religious right, fears about
the onrush of tyranny hardened into certainty back at the time of Waco, in
the dawn of the Clinton era.
The week before the Elian raid, the left saw the state in action against
their demonstrations in Washington D.C., against the World Bank and WTO.
Here's how Sam Smith, longtime Washington reporter and editor of The
Progressive Review, evoked the events unfolding in the capital: "Illegal
sweep arrests. Print shops intimidated into closing by police. Universities
canceling public forums under pressure from officials. Homes of opposition
leaders broken into and ransacked. Headquarters of the opposition raided and
closed by police. These were the sort of things by which we defined the evil
of the old Soviet Union. And now, they have become characteristics of the
federal government's handling of the current protests."
It should be added that in Washington, the treatment of arrested people
(some of them delegates swept up in the cop rampage) makes for hair-raising
reading, with random beatings, denials of food and water for 24 hours,
racial abuse, threats of rape and refusals to allow consultations with
attorneys. As in the 1960s, white, middle-class demonstrators (and their
parents) are learning what happens to poor people all the time.
There's no sign that mainstream politicians were a whit perturbed by police
conduct in Seattle or Washington D.C. The picture of the Elian snatch did
elicit some reaction. Illinois Rep. and House Speaker Dennis Hastert
proclaimed sternly that "our government has invaded the home of American
citizens, who deserve the protection of our laws and a certain respect for
their rights."
Will Congress take a serious look at the rise and rise of our jackboot
state? On the evidence of the last 30 years, no. Both parties have eagerly
conjoined in militarizing the police, extending police powers, and carving
away basic rights. Very often, the Democrats have been worse. It was
Republican Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois who led the recent and partially
successful charge against asset seizure. It was Democratic Sen. Charles
Schumer of New York who was the factotum of the U.S. Justice Department in
trying to head off Hyde and his coalition.
The rise of the jackboot state has marched in lock step with the insane and
ineffective "War on Drugs," and this has been a bipartisan affair. Its
consequences are etched into the fabric of our lives. Just think of drug
testing, now a virtually mandatory condition of employment, even though it's
an outrageous violation of personal sovereignty, as well as being thoroughly
unreliable. In the era when America has been led by two self-confessed
pot-smokers -- Clinton and Gore -- the number of people held for drug crimes
in federal prisons has increased by 64 percent.
No-knock raids -- a prime feature of any police state -- are becoming more
common as federal, state and local politicians and law-enforcement agencies
decide that the War on Drugs justifies dumping the Fourth Amendment. Even in
states where search warrants require a knock on the door before entry,
police routinely flout the requirement.
The Posse Comitatus Act forbidding military involvement in domestic law
enforcement is rapidly becoming as dead as the Fourth Amendment. Because of
drug-war exceptions created in the Posse Comitatus Act, every region of the
United States now has a Joint Task Force staff in charge of coordinating
military involvement in domestic law enforcement.
In many cases, street deployment of paramilitary units is funded by
"community policing" grants from the federal government. The majority of
police departments use their paramilitary units to serve "dynamic entry"
search warrants. The SWAT team in Chapel Hill, N.C., conducted a large-scale
crack raid of an entire block in a predominantly African-American
neighborhood. The raid, termed "Operation Redi-Rock," resulted in the
detention and search of up to 100 people, all of whom were African
Americans. (Whites were allowed to leave the area.) No one was ever
prosecuted for a crime.
There are signs of popular unrest and mutiny. The ACLU and the National
Rifle Association have jointly called for President Clinton to appoint a
commission to investigate lawlessness in law enforcement. States with
democratic processes such as ballot initiatives have seen brave efforts to
curb the war on drugs. California has a medical marijuana law, and Hawaii's
legislature just passed one. Oregon and Arizona have also moved to
decriminalize personal use. The feds' reaction has been to attack these
states by threatening to withold highway funds, the usual mode of
persuasion.
Let's see what those legislators indignant about the INS snatching of Elian
do next. Right now, the swelling police state is an expression of the War on
Drugs. No politician who does not call for a cease-fire and a rollback in
that cruel, futile war -- our domestic Vietnam -- has any standing to bewail
the loss of our freedoms.
To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other
columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at
www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2000 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
