We get into discussions based on a belief that the government belongs
to us, the people, and really cares for our well being. In that
framework, we then discuss the various attempts to keep America safe
and Americans free.
And we get all tangled up in sorting out just how we do keep our
people safe without compromising their freedom. Freedom always comes
in last in such discussions. We cannot stay safe without being
surrounded by a protective blanket, including open spying to hunt down
and eliminate Terrorists.
But what if the conversations were based on the fact that the
protection sought is not protection for the American People, at least
not for the masses of working Americans. In a framework of the Empire
wanting to protect its freedom to come and go as it pleases, we would
see that plans for surveillance and spying were not set up to protect
the majority of the American People. Our interests are very
different. The Empire needs to expand, to conquer, to dominate. The
American People need jobs that pay decent wages, free or inexpensive
education and health services. American People need clean cities,
safe from abuse by scoundrels and overbearing cops. American People
need healthy food and clean water and air. American People need to
have a government in which they have a say, preferably a government
they control.
There is little common ground between the needs of the Empire and
those of the People.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/4/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dealing With Mass Killings in the US: Funding Our Children, Not Our Wars
Monday, 03 August 2015 10:23 By Karen J. Greenberg, TomDispatch | Op-Ed
Imagine that you're in the FBI and you receive a tip - or more likely, pick
up information through the kind of mass surveillance in which the national
security state now specializes. In a series of tweets, a young man has
expressed sympathy for the Islamic State (ISIS), al-Qaeda, or another
terrorist group or cause. He's 16, has no criminal record, and has shown no
signs that he might be planning a criminal act. He does, however, seem
angry
and has demonstrated an interest in following ISIS's social media feeds as
they fan the flames of youth discontent worldwide. He's even expressed some
thoughts about how ISIS's "caliphate," the Islamic "homeland" being carved
out in Syria and Iraq, might be a place where people like him could find
meaning and purpose in an otherwise alienated life.
A quick search of his school records shows that his grades, previously
stellar, are starting to fall. He's spending more time online, increasingly
clicking on jihadist websites. He has, you discover, repeatedly read news
stories about mass killings in the US. Worse yet, his parents own legally
registered guns. A search of his medical records shows that he's been
treated by a psychiatrist.
As a member of law enforcement, what exactly do you do now? You know that
in
recent years, mass killings have become an all-too-frequent part of
American
life. There were the Chattanooga military recruitment office shootings; the
Charleston church killings; the abortive attack on a Mohammed cartoon
contest in Garland, Texas; the Boston marathon bombing; the Sandy Hook
school slaughter; and the movie theater shootings in Aurora, Colorado, and
most recently, in Lafayette, Louisiana. Loners, losers, jihadis, racists -
label the killers as you will - as a law enforcement agent, you feel the
pressure to prevent such events from happening again.
Given the staggering array of tools granted to the national security state
domestically since 9/11, it's a wonder (not to say a tragic embarrassment)
that such killings occur again and again. They are clearly not being
prevented and at least part of the reason may lie in the national security
state's ongoing focus on "counterterrorism," that is, on Islamic extremism.
For the most part, after all, these mass murders have not been committed by
Islamic extremists. From the more than 100 deaths of this sort since the
Aurora shooting three summers ago, only eight were killed by individuals
inspired by Islamic radicalism.
Soon after the attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush and
Attorney General John Ashcroft declared an all-out, no-holds-barred policy
of terrorism "prevention." Another 9/11 was to be avoided at all costs and
a
"global war on terror" was quickly set in motion.
Domestically, in the name of prevention, the government launched a series
of
measures that transformed the American landscape when it came to both
surveillance and civil rights. Yet despite the acquisition of newly
aggressive powers of every sort, law enforcement has a woeful record when
it
comes to catching domestic mass murderers before the damage is done. In
fact, a vanishingly small number of them have even shown up on the radar of
the national security state.
The ability to collect all phone metadata from all Americans has not
deterred these attacks, nor has the massive surveillance of Muslim
communities in the US, nor did the use of FBI informants to encourage often
disturbed, trash-talking individuals towards jihadist crimes. In short, the
government's strategy of preventing attacks by individuals we've now come
to
call "lone wolves" has failed, despite the curtailing of the First
Amendment's guarantee of freedom of association, religion, and speech and
the Fourth Amendment's guarantee of freedom from warrantless surveillance.
Time for a Change
As someone who has followed the development of the national security state
carefully in the post-9/11 era and spent a fair amount of time talking
publicly and privately with law enforcement agents and officials, I can see
that many of them are aware of such problems and frustrated with the old
approach. They know something's not working and that it's time for a change
- and a change is, in fact, coming. Whether it's the change that's needed
is
the question.
Aware of the legacy of the Bush years, the Obama White House, the
Department
of Homeland Security, and the FBI have spent much time and effort
rethinking
previous policies and have designed what they are calling a "new" approach
to security. It's meant to partner prevention - the dominant strategy of
the
past - with a new word that has come into favor: "intervention." The goal
is
to intervene with youth attracted to extremism before violence can occur.
As
with so many attempts at government redesign, the new policy already has
its
own name and acronym. It's labeled "Countering Violent Extremism," or CVE.
It's meant to marry the post-9/11 law enforcement and intelligence-driven
profiling of potential terrorists with an approach borrowed from
non-law-enforcement programs like those designed to help individuals deal
with and break the pattern of drug or alcohol abuse.
The new CVE program will theoretically rely on a three-pronged strategy:
building awareness of the causes of radicalization, countering extremist
narratives (especially online), and emphasizing community-led intervention
by bringing together law enforcement, local service providers, outreach
programs, local governments, and academics. It is, in other words, meant to
be a kinder, gentler means of addressing potential violence before it
occurs, of coming to grips with that 16-year-old who's surfing jihadist
websites and wondering about his future.
The White House recently convened a "summit" on this "new" strategy, with
law enforcement officials, Muslim community leaders, and others, and
Congress is now considering a bill that would create a new government
agency
to implement it. It sounds good. After all, who's against keeping the
country safe and reducing violent extremism? But just how new is it really?
In essence, the national security state will be sending more or less the
same line-up of ideas to the plate with instructions to potentially get
even
more invasive, taking surveillance down to the level of disturbed kids and
community organizations. Why then should we expect the softer-nicer version
of harder-tougher to look any better or prove any more effective? Coming up
with a new name and an acronym is one thing, genuinely carrying out a
different program involving a new approach is another.
With that in mind, here are five questions based on past errors that might
help us all judge just how smart (or not so smart) the CVE program will
turn
out to be:
1. Will the program's focus (rather than its rhetoric) be broader than
radical Islam? As the numerous mass shootings of recent years have shown,
radical Islam is only a modest slice of a much larger story of youth
violence.In fact, as a recent report from Fordham's Center on National
Security makes clear, even the individuals alleged to be inspired by ISIS
in
the past two years defy profiling in terms of ethnicity, family, religion,
or race. Yet the new strategy - not so surprising, given the cast of
characters who will carry it out - looks like it's already trapped in the
Muslim-centric policies of the past. In this vein, civil libertarians worry
that the new strategy continues to "threaten freedoms of speech,
association, and religion," as a recent letter signed by 49 civil liberties
organizations put it. In practical terms, the odds are that the usual focus
means that detecting the sort of shooters who have dominated the headlines
for the past couple of years, domestically, is extremely unlikely.
2. Can the kinds of community outreach on which CVE interventionism is
theoretically based crack the reality of lone-wolf killers? By definition,
"lone wolves" are on their own. Yet the new CVE program expects to rely on
what it calls "community-led intervention" to detect signs of
radicalization
or disturbance among the young. We know, however, that lone-wolf killers
interact little with such communities or often even other individuals. They
tend to be deeply alienated and startlingly unattached. Deputizing
community
organizations - be they mosques, churches, community centers, or schools -
to interact with law enforcement agencies in developing greater awareness
of
individuals faltering in life and in danger of turning to violence belies
the reality that such young men are generally cut off from almost everyone.
(A special danger of such an approach is that its focus may, in fact, fall
not on potential future criminals and killers, but on oddballs, loners, and
those with ideas critical of the society in which they live. In other
words, the very people who may in maturity become our innovators,
inventors,
and artists could soon become targets of the national security state in a
desperate attempt to find future mass murderers and terrorists.)
3. Will CVE focus on the crucial role that youthful despair and
depression play in such cases and on the absence of adequate psychological
intervention for such figures? Aurora shooter James Holmes had lost his
girlfriend and his job, was failing out of school, and had just received a
speeding citation. Chattanooga shooter Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez had
lost
one job - at a nuclear facility no less - was in danger of losing another,
was facing bankruptcy, and had had a recent run-in with law enforcement.
Both Holmes and Abdulazeez were increasingly unstable and had a history of
substance abuse that they were unable to break, despite help from family
and
doctors. Both were undoubtedly depressed. Even if the government could
find
such individuals before they lash out, what role has it imagined for
counseling in any intervention process?
4. Will the CVE program take on America's gun lobby? This is, of
course, the elephant in the room. Any strategy that ignores the ready
availability of guns, legal and otherwise, in this country and the striking
absence of gun control laws is whistling in a hurricane. While deterring
individuals from violence may be an essential focus for any new program,
overlooking the striking lethality of what they kill with and the ready
availability of weapons like assault rifles honed to mass slaughter is a
strange way to go. Chillingly enough, recent shooters have tended to
collect
whole arsenals of weaponry. Once a top student with a 3.9 grade point
average in college, the increasingly disturbed James Holmes managed to
purchase two Glock 22s, one semi-automatic rifle, and 1,000 rounds of
ammunition, all of it legally. The Chattanooga shooter possessed four guns,
three of which - a handgun and two rifles - were on him at the time of the
shooting. If gun control protections had been in place in the United
States,
it's possible that neither of these young men would have been able to carry
out a mass killing, whatever their mental states and desires.
5. Will the CVE program have any regard for the bright line between law
enforcement and civil society? The record of the national security state
since 9/11 on this subject remains dismal indeed. Can the government's CVE
strategy, seeking public-private partnerships between law enforcement and
local communities, refrain from again crossing so many lines? In reality,
such a strategy of intervention would undoubtedly best be served by an
independent effort on the part of organizations in civil society. Perhaps
rather than creating yet another new security outfit, new civilian
organizations are what's really needed. What about a new version of Big
Brothers Big Sisters of America geared to the age of terror? What about a
teen-oriented version of the Head Start program that gave children the
resources they needed to be more productive at school and helped redirect
them when they failed? What about more support for programs that oppose
bullying? What about a resource center for parents confused about what is
expected of their children in today's world?
To be fair, there are some small signs of a desire for change in the law
enforcement community. In recent cases involving teenagers attracted to
ISIS, the FBI has shown a less punitive approach, indicating a desire not
to
arrest them or at worst to charge them in ways that would avoid the
outrageously long sentences that have become the new norm of the post-9/11
years. The courts, too, may be starting to show signs of a new sense of
restraint. In Minneapolis, for instance, a federal judge is putting teens
charged with terrorism crimes in halfway houses or letting them out on
bail,
highly unusual for such cases.
It's easy enough to blame Islamic fundamentalism for luring lost American
children into violent networks of jihadism by offering meaning in lives
that
feel meaningless and individualized attention (on the Internet) for young
people who feel ignored and invisible. It's harder to face the fact that
the
country is faltering when it comes to providing constructive remedies
across
racial and religious lines for those who retreat into violence in reaction
to hopelessness and isolation.
In reality, it probably matters little how the government tries to create
predictive metrics for individuals who might someday turn to mass violence,
or what groups it targets, or how it deploys law enforcement to "solve"
this
problem. Too many youths experience periods of doubt, depression, anxiety,
anger, and instability to predict which few will turn to acts of violence.
What's needed instead is a less law-enforcement-oriented style of thinking
and the funding of a far less punitive style of interventionism that would
actually provide young people at risk with support services, constructive
outlets, and reasons to feel that a rewarding life might someday be theirs.
Isn't it time, in other words, to put as many resources and as much
innovative thinking into our children as into our wars?
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not
be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
KAREN J. GREENBERG
Karen J. Greenberg is the executive director of the New York University
Center on Law and Security, author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's
First One Hundred Days, editor of The Torture Debate in America, and a
frequent contributor to TomDispatch.com.
RELATED STORIES
War Is the New Normal: Seven Deadly Reasons Why US Wars Persist
By William J. Astore, TomDispatch | Op-Ed
War for Decades to Come? One Year After Islamic State Advance, US Could
Send
Hundreds More Troops to Iraq
By Juan González, Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! | Video Interview
________________________________________
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Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Dealing With Mass Killings in the US: Funding Our Children, Not Our Wars
Monday, 03 August 2015 10:23 By Karen J. Greenberg, TomDispatch | Op-Ed
• font size Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
reference not valid.
• Imagine that you're in the FBI and you receive a tip - or more
likely, pick up information through the kind of mass surveillance in which
the national security state now specializes. In a series of tweets, a young
man has expressed sympathy for the Islamic State (ISIS), al-Qaeda, or
another terrorist group or cause. He's 16, has no criminal record, and has
shown no signs that he might be planning a criminal act. He does, however,
seem angry and has demonstrated an interest in following ISIS's social
media
feeds as they fan the flames of youth discontent worldwide. He's even
expressed some thoughts about how ISIS's "caliphate," the Islamic
"homeland"
being carved out in Syria and Iraq, might be a place where people like him
could find meaning and purpose in an otherwise alienated life.
• A quick search of his school records shows that his grades,
previously stellar, are starting to fall. He's spending more time online,
increasingly clicking on jihadist websites. He has, you discover,
repeatedly
read news stories about mass killings in the US. Worse yet, his parents own
legally registered guns. A search of his medical records shows that he's
been treated by a psychiatrist.
As a member of law enforcement, what exactly do you do now? You know that
in
recent years, mass killings have become an all-too-frequent part of
American
life. There were the Chattanooga military recruitment office shootings; the
Charleston church killings; the abortive attack on a Mohammed cartoon
contest in Garland, Texas; the Boston marathon bombing; the Sandy Hook
school slaughter; and the movie theater shootings in Aurora, Colorado, and
most recently, in Lafayette, Louisiana. Loners, losers, jihadis, racists -
label the killers as you will - as a law enforcement agent, you feel the
pressure to prevent such events from happening again.
Given the staggering array of tools granted to the national security state
domestically since 9/11, it's a wonder (not to say a tragic embarrassment)
that such killings occur again and again. They are clearly not being
prevented and at least part of the reason may lie in the national security
state's ongoing focus on "counterterrorism," that is, on Islamic extremism.
For the most part, after all, these mass murders have not been committed by
Islamic extremists. From the more than 100 deaths of this sort since the
Aurora shooting three summers ago, only eight were killed by individuals
inspired by Islamic radicalism.
Soon after the attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush and
Attorney General John Ashcroft declared an all-out, no-holds-barred policy
of terrorism "prevention." Another 9/11 was to be avoided at all costs and
a
"global war on terror" was quickly set in motion.
Domestically, in the name of prevention, the government launched a series
of
measures that transformed the American landscape when it came to both
surveillance and civil rights. Yet despite the acquisition of newly
aggressive powers of every sort, law enforcement has a woeful record when
it
comes to catching domestic mass murderers before the damage is done. In
fact, a vanishingly small number of them have even shown up on the radar of
the national security state.
The ability to collect all phone metadata from all Americans has not
deterred these attacks, nor has the massive surveillance of Muslim
communities in the US, nor did the use of FBI informants to encourage often
disturbed, trash-talking individuals towards jihadist crimes. In short, the
government's strategy of preventing attacks by individuals we've now come
to
call "lone wolves" has failed, despite the curtailing of the First
Amendment's guarantee of freedom of association, religion, and speech and
the Fourth Amendment's guarantee of freedom from warrantless surveillance.
Time for a Change
As someone who has followed the development of the national security state
carefully in the post-9/11 era and spent a fair amount of time talking
publicly and privately with law enforcement agents and officials, I can see
that many of them are aware of such problems and frustrated with the old
approach. They know something's not working and that it's time for a change
- and a change is, in fact, coming. Whether it's the change that's needed
is
the question.
Aware of the legacy of the Bush years, the Obama White House, the
Department
of Homeland Security, and the FBI have spent much time and effort
rethinking
previous policies and have designed what they are calling a "new" approach
to security. It's meant to partner prevention - the dominant strategy of
the
past - with a new word that has come into favor: "intervention." The goal
is
to intervene with youth attracted to extremism before violence can occur.
As
with so many attempts at government redesign, the new policy already has
its
own name and acronym. It's labeled "Countering Violent Extremism," or CVE.
It's meant to marry the post-9/11 law enforcement and intelligence-driven
profiling of potential terrorists with an approach borrowed from
non-law-enforcement programs like those designed to help individuals deal
with and break the pattern of drug or alcohol abuse.
The new CVE program will theoretically rely on a three-pronged strategy:
building awareness of the causes of radicalization, countering extremist
narratives (especially online), and emphasizing community-led intervention
by bringing together law enforcement, local service providers, outreach
programs, local governments, and academics. It is, in other words, meant to
be a kinder, gentler means of addressing potential violence before it
occurs, of coming to grips with that 16-year-old who's surfing jihadist
websites and wondering about his future.
The White House recently convened a "summit" on this "new" strategy, with
law enforcement officials, Muslim community leaders, and others, and
Congress is now considering a bill that would create a new government
agency
to implement it. It sounds good. After all, who's against keeping the
country safe and reducing violent extremism? But just how new is it really?
In essence, the national security state will be sending more or less the
same line-up of ideas to the plate with instructions to potentially get
even
more invasive, taking surveillance down to the level of disturbed kids and
community organizations. Why then should we expect the softer-nicer version
of harder-tougher to look any better or prove any more effective? Coming up
with a new name and an acronym is one thing, genuinely carrying out a
different program involving a new approach is another.
With that in mind, here are five questions based on past errors that might
help us all judge just how smart (or not so smart) the CVE program will
turn
out to be:
1. Will the program's focus (rather than its rhetoric) be broader than
radical Islam? As the numerous mass shootings of recent years have shown,
radical Islam is only a modest slice of a much larger story of youth
violence.In fact, as a recent report from Fordham's Center on National
Security makes clear, even the individuals alleged to be inspired by ISIS
in
the past two years defy profiling in terms of ethnicity, family, religion,
or race. Yet the new strategy - not so surprising, given the cast of
characters who will carry it out - looks like it's already trapped in the
Muslim-centric policies of the past. In this vein, civil libertarians worry
that the new strategy continues to "threaten freedoms of speech,
association, and religion," as a recent letter signed by 49 civil liberties
organizations put it. In practical terms, the odds are that the usual focus
means that detecting the sort of shooters who have dominated the headlines
for the past couple of years, domestically, is extremely unlikely.
2. Can the kinds of community outreach on which CVE interventionism is
theoretically based crack the reality of lone-wolf killers? By definition,
"lone wolves" are on their own. Yet the new CVE program expects to rely on
what it calls "community-led intervention" to detect signs of
radicalization
or disturbance among the young. We know, however, that lone-wolf killers
interact little with such communities or often even other individuals. They
tend to be deeply alienated and startlingly unattached. Deputizing
community
organizations - be they mosques, churches, community centers, or schools -
to interact with law enforcement agencies in developing greater awareness
of
individuals faltering in life and in danger of turning to violence belies
the reality that such young men are generally cut off from almost everyone.
(A special danger of such an approach is that its focus may, in fact, fall
not on potential future criminals and killers, but on oddballs, loners, and
those with ideas critical of the society in which they live. In other
words,
the very people who may in maturity become our innovators, inventors, and
artists could soon become targets of the national security state in a
desperate attempt to find future mass murderers and terrorists.)
3. Will CVE focus on the crucial role that youthful despair and
depression play in such cases and on the absence of adequate psychological
intervention for such figures? Aurora shooter James Holmes had lost his
girlfriend and his job, was failing out of school, and had just received a
speeding citation. Chattanooga shooter Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez had lost
one job - at a nuclear facility no less - was in danger of losing another,
was facing bankruptcy, and had had a recent run-in with law enforcement.
Both Holmes and Abdulazeez were increasingly unstable and had a history of
substance abuse that they were unable to break, despite help from family
and
doctors. Both were undoubtedly depressed. Even if the government could find
such individuals before they lash out, what role has it imagined for
counseling in any intervention process?
4. Will the CVE program take on America's gun lobby? This is, of
course, the elephant in the room. Any strategy that ignores the ready
availability of guns, legal and otherwise, in this country and the striking
absence of gun control laws is whistling in a hurricane. While deterring
individuals from violence may be an essential focus for any new program,
overlooking the striking lethality of what they kill with and the ready
availability of weapons like assault rifles honed to mass slaughter is a
strange way to go. Chillingly enough, recent shooters have tended to
collect
whole arsenals of weaponry. Once a top student with a 3.9 grade point
average in college, the increasingly disturbed James Holmes managed to
purchase two Glock 22s, one semi-automatic rifle, and 1,000 rounds of
ammunition, all of it legally. The Chattanooga shooter possessed four guns,
three of which - a handgun and two rifles - were on him at the time of the
shooting. If gun control protections had been in place in the United
States,
it's possible that neither of these young men would have been able to carry
out a mass killing, whatever their mental states and desires.
5. Will the CVE program have any regard for the bright line between law
enforcement and civil society? The record of the national security state
since 9/11 on this subject remains dismal indeed. Can the government's CVE
strategy, seeking public-private partnerships between law enforcement and
local communities, refrain from again crossing so many lines? In reality,
such a strategy of intervention would undoubtedly best be served by an
independent effort on the part of organizations in civil society. Perhaps
rather than creating yet another new security outfit, new civilian
organizations are what's really needed. What about a new version of Big
Brothers Big Sisters of America geared to the age of terror? What about a
teen-oriented version of the Head Start program that gave children the
resources they needed to be more productive at school and helped redirect
them when they failed? What about more support for programs that oppose
bullying? What about a resource center for parents confused about what is
expected of their children in today's world?
To be fair, there are some small signs of a desire for change in the law
enforcement community. In recent cases involving teenagers attracted to
ISIS, the FBI has shown a less punitive approach, indicating a desire not
to
arrest them or at worst to charge them in ways that would avoid the
outrageously long sentences that have become the new norm of the post-9/11
years. The courts, too, may be starting to show signs of a new sense of
restraint. In Minneapolis, for instance, a federal judge is putting teens
charged with terrorism crimes in halfway houses or letting them out on
bail,
highly unusual for such cases.
It's easy enough to blame Islamic fundamentalism for luring lost American
children into violent networks of jihadism by offering meaning in lives
that
feel meaningless and individualized attention (on the Internet) for young
people who feel ignored and invisible. It's harder to face the fact that
the
country is faltering when it comes to providing constructive remedies
across
racial and religious lines for those who retreat into violence in reaction
to hopelessness and isolation.
In reality, it probably matters little how the government tries to create
predictive metrics for individuals who might someday turn to mass violence,
or what groups it targets, or how it deploys law enforcement to "solve"
this
problem. Too many youths experience periods of doubt, depression, anxiety,
anger, and instability to predict which few will turn to acts of violence.
What's needed instead is a less law-enforcement-oriented style of thinking
and the funding of a far less punitive style of interventionism that would
actually provide young people at risk with support services, constructive
outlets, and reasons to feel that a rewarding life might someday be theirs.
Isn't it time, in other words, to put as many resources and as much
innovative thinking into our children as into our wars?
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not
be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Karen J. Greenberg
Karen J. Greenberg is the executive director of the New York University
Center on Law and Security, author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's
First One Hundred Days, editor of The Torture Debate in America, and a
frequent contributor to TomDispatch.com.
Related Stories
War Is the New Normal: Seven Deadly Reasons Why US Wars Persist
By William J. Astore, TomDispatch | Op-EdWar for Decades to Come? One Year
After Islamic State Advance, US Could Send Hundreds More Troops to Iraq
By Juan González, Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! | Video Interview
Show Comments
