The enemies of freedom have allies

While it might surprise some readers, I do not have a problem with SWAT Teams per se. In fact, what happened in Paris yesterday is a perfect example of what a good, properly trained and equipped SWAT Team can do in an appropriate situation. Those sorts of terrorist actions are precisely what SWAT Teams were supposed to be intended for.

What bothers me is when these tactics are used not against terrorists, but against ordinary Americans — especially those under investigation for victimless crimes.

In the past couple of days, I have been watching various pundits and security consultants on television taking maximum advantage of the Paris operation to heap praises on massive NSA surveillance and SWAT Teams. They are saying we must beef up and militarize our police even more than we have, and we need more — not less — surveillance of the citizenry.

Apparently I am not the only one to be noticing this.

Man Mountain Molehill left this comment to M. Simon’s recent post:

-The Surveillance State Bumps Uglies With the PC Left-

A short play in one unnatural act.

LEFTIST
You can’t single out radical muslims for inspection, that
would be profiling. You have to treat everyone equally.

SURVEILLANCE STATIST
So, if we want to, say, monitor phone calls from known jihadis
we would also have to monitor everyone else…

LEFTIST
Well, of course. It’s only fair.

SURVEILLANCE STATIST
(to himself)hmmm, so by extension if we monitor even one we
must monitor all. Hot diggity!
[walks off stage awkwardly hunched over, holding a large
binder in front of his pants]

Exuent omnes, whoever he is.

That is called collusion, and it is exactly what is happening. It has been escalating since 9/11 and it is now totally out of control. Yet these people on TV are (quite opportunistically, IMO) calling for more.

In April there was a National Review article titled “The United States of SWAT” which noted some grim facts:

Since 9/11, the feds have issued a plethora of homeland-
security grants that encourage local police departments to buy surplus military hardware and form their own SWAT units. By 2005, at least 80 percent of towns with a population between 25,000 and 50,000 people had their own SWAT team. The number of raids conducted by local police SWAT teams has gone from 3,000 a year in the 1980s to over 50,000 a year today.

Once SWAT teams are created, they will be used. Nationwide, they are used for standoffs, often serious ones, with bad guys. But at other times they’ve been used for crimes that hardly warrant military-style raids. Examples include angry dogs, domestic disputes, and misdemeanor marijuana possession. In 2010, a Phoenix, Ariz., sheriff’s SWAT team that included a tank and several armored vehicles raided the home of Jesus
Llovera. The tank, driven by the newly deputized action-film star Steven Seagal, plowed right into Llovera’s house. The incident was filmed and, together with footage of Seagal-accompanied immigration raids, was later used for Seagal’s A&E TV law-enforcement reality show.

The crime committed by Jesus Llovera was staging cockfights. During the sheriff’s raid, his dog was killed, and later all of his chickens were put to sleep.

That’s what is being cheered on in the name of fighting terrorism.

Earlier I opined that the War on Drugs undermines the War on Terrorism and that we cannot have both and remain a free country.

Not the first time I have made that argument.

Nor was my argument original. A PJ Media article pointed out that William F. Buckley had been saying the same thing for years.

the War on Drugs has been undermining the War on Terror for long enough now that it’s time to reconsider both sides’ lack of consideration to what is an extremely pressing topic.

And here’s Buckley, 1996:

the pharmaceutical cost of cocaine and heroin is approximately 2 per cent of the street price of those drugs. Since a cocaine addict can spend as much as $1,000 per week to sustain his habit, he would need to come up with that $1,000. The approximate fencing cost of stolen goods is 80 per cent, so that to come up with $1,000 can require stealing $5,000 worth of jewels, cars, whatever. We can see that at free-market rates, $20 per week would provide the addict with the cocaine which, in this wartime drug situation, requires of him $1,000.

Which was obvious to the author at PJM:

This point is relevant to our dilemma with the Afghan opposition for a single, obvious reason. Mark-up due to criminalization turns drugs into big business. Some of the revenues from that big business in America may funnel back into the economy as dealers buy fancy cars, and enjoy extravagant lifestyles, but in Afghanistan it buys arms for the enemy. But most importantly it delivers the hearts and minds of the population to those who protect their poppy harvest; and that, of course, is not the U.S. and its allies.

That, of course is only one aspect of how the War on Drugs undermines the War on Terrorism.

The massive surveillance is another. The technology which has been invaluable in combating terrorism has been and is, like the high tech weaponry, used against ordinary Americans in the name of the War on Drugs. It is a massive violation of the Constitution, and this threatens to defeat the entire purpose of the war against terrorists. They want to destroy our freedom, and we are turning right around and transforming our fight against them into a war against our own freedom.

What could be more tragic, and stupid?

You could almost call it collusion.