Blowback: Does the US Military Incubate Brutal, Abusive Cops Along With Their Deranged, Disconnected Shooters?

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Published on Black Agenda Report (http://www.blackagendareport.com)

Malicious authoritarians in both parties peddle fantasies connecting Black Lives Matter and the broad movement of millions against police immunity and impunity for violent acts against civilians with the deranged shooters of cops in Dallas and Baton Rouge. The connection they won’t talk about is that both the shooters and many violent and abusive police first practiced their trade in the twisted and deranged world of the US military.

Blowback: Does the US Military Incubate Brutal, Abusive Cops Along With Their Deranged, Disconnected Shooters?

Media spokespeople and politicians in both parties are working overtime to paint imaginary connections between the broad movement supported by millions of Americans to strip police of their traditional immunity and impunity for violent acts committed against civilians on the one hand, and the deranged, disconnected shooters of police in Texas and Louisiana.

The real links they studiously ignore are that the Dallas [4] and Baton Rouge [5] shooters were both veterans of the unjust and murderous US military occupations of Afghanistan and/or Iraq, as are many of the police who commit violent acts against their fellow Americans after they return home. While the percentage of cops with military backgrounds is unclear due to the existence of special laws protecting police personnel, disciplinary and other records from prosecutorial and public scrutiny, the percentage of military veterans among police around the country is probably higher than any other line of work excepting civilian employees of the Pentagon, intelligence services and their contractors.

The US military is widely known to aggressively discourage [6] soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines from admitting to or seeking help for psychological disorders and injuries. The world our military members live in is a brutal and twisted place where two out of five [7] women are sexually assaulted. It’s a world where reporting, not committing such an assault is a career-ender, a world where seeking help for psychological problems can impair your security clearance and job prospects years later in civilian life because military medical and psychological records, unlike those of civilians are not confidential.

Indications are that the Baton Rouge and Dallas shooters both had problems which are likely results of their military experience. By the same token, it’s not implausible to imagine that many violent and abusive former military members were in need of psychological help even before they became law enforcement officers.

For too long Americans have hidden from the facts and the consequences of America’s brutal overseas wars, even while making motion picture heroes of white snipers like Chris Kyle [8] who famously claimed to have been paid to shoot 30 so-called “looters” [9] in New Orleans during the Katrina disaster. In Chicago, the famous police torturer John Burge first learned his trade in the Vietnam war’s Phoenix [10] program. A generation later Burge’s successors in the Chicago Police Department were directly linked to the mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo. Rank and file US torturers at Abu Gharaib were Pennsylvania prison guards [11] in civilian life.

While malicious authoritarians from Hillary Clinton and Wolf Blitzer to Bill O’Reilly and Rudi Guliani want to sell us their fantasies connecting Black Lives Matter movement and shootings of police, they ignore the all too real blowback on American streets from our nation’s permanent war footing.

It’s not fantasy but fact that US special ops troops are currently active in dozens of countries across Afric [12]a [12] and Asia, and in Ukraine [13] on the borders of Russia, doing bloody brutal and unspeakable things the American people don’t endorse and didn’t vote for. Their crimes go unacknowledged and unpunished and their psychological injuries untreated. Our military, stationed at the frontiers of US empire in more than a hundred countries around the world are incubating the next waves of brutal and abusive police, along with their disconnected and deranged shooters, all practicing what they never should have been taught, bringing home to us another cost of global empire.

For Black Agenda Radio I’m Bruce Dixon. Find us on the web at www.blackagendareport.com [14].

ba radio commentary [16]

Source URL: http://www.blackagendareport.com/imperial-blowback01

Links

[1] http://www.blackagendareport.com/imperial-blowback01

[2] http://www.blackagendareport.com/category/department-war/global-war-terror

[3] http://www.blackagendareport.com/category/us-politics/policing

[4] http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/08/us/micah-xavier-johnson-dallas-shooter/

[5] http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/07/17/ex-marine-identified-shooter-3-baton-rouge-officers-reports.html

[6] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/14/veteran-mental-health_n_2475892.html

[7] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-rape-military-idUSKCN0QW24P20150827

[8] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/06/real-american-sniper-hate-filled-killer-why-patriots-calling-hero-chris-kyle

[9] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/30/the-complicated-but-unveriable-legacy-of-chris-kyle-the-deadliest-sniper-in-american-history/

[10] http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/08/the-phoenix-program-americas-use-of-terror-in-vietnam/

[11] http://articles.mcall.com/2004-05-18/opinion/3539600_1_graner-abu-ghraib-prison-security-prison

[12] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175830/tomgram:_nick_turse,_africom_becomes_a_%22war-fighting_combatant_command%22/

[13] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/13/american-paratroopers-in-ukraine-have-putin-rattled.html

[14] http://www.blackagendareport.com/

[15] mailto:bruce.dixon@blackagendareport.com

[16] http://www.blackagendareport.com/category/other/ba-radio-commentary

NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and a state committee member of the GA Green Party. He lives and works in Marietta GA and can be reached via email at bruce.dixon@blackagendareport.com [15]

NOTE: While always finding brother Bruce Dixon’s essays and editorials compelling for their clarity and passion, we take exception to his characterization of the Black shooters as “deranged.” That epithet is precisely the term currently favored by the corporate media and its innumerable hacks, a way to deny that there is in fact logical and demonstrable reasons for such people to feel justified in retaliating in blood. We all know that the lives of black people, especially young black males, the lives of police officers, and the social peace, will only be safe and stable when real justice is instituted by the powers that be. It is the apex of the social pyramid that has long benefited from the ugly, lopsided racialist treatment accorded minorities in America. By using the term “deranged” we allow the system defenders to “medicalize” the problem, effectively denying the fact that, while terrible, these men’s actions were caused by legitimate fears, grievances, and pent-up anger. Not to mention the mental wounds and despair they must have incorporated, as Dixon correctly points out, resulting from their service. Confronted with a similar situation, we are certain that the vast majority of whites would respond in identical fashion. All it takes is some honesty and decency to recognize that much.—Editors

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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL-QUOTES BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS.