COIN In Chicago
BY Herschel Smith8 years, 10 months ago
After more than a year of stonewalling and what some might call obstructing justice, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel issued an apology for the horrific execution of Laquan McDonald by Chicago police officer Jason van Dyke. Laquan McDonald was the black 17-year-old who was shot 16 times by the police officer on Oct. 20, 2014. The video showing the shooting was only released by Chicago officials when they were ordered to do so by a judge in late November 2015.
But apology or not, the underlying substantive issue is that the summary execution of McDonald was the sort of atrocity that one would expect to see in what the U.S. once called “police states.” In fact, one can imagine a death squad execution in El Salvador in the 1980s looking very similar on video to McDonald’s slaying.
“Police state” is a term which has fallen into disuse since 9/11 with the adoption of so many similar practices by the so-called “democracies” in their domestic policies. The term generally was applied to Fascist or Communist governments and described a country where the police and the military exercised martial law over citizens or military occupation powers that uses military force to control a civilian population.
Sometimes these arbitrary powers were enforced by summary executions, depending on how much the authorities could get away with in their “extreme measures.” This was the practice in countries such as Nazi Germany; Pinochet’s Chile; El Salvador and Guatemala during the Cold War; to a lesser degree, apartheid South Africa; and military occupied territories such as Tibet, Israeli-occupied Palestine, and Eastern Europe under the Soviet Union.
But Chicago isn’t under martial law or military occupation, is it? Nor is it an apartheid state, with apartheid enforced by domestic martial law and military force, is it? To a normal civilian-oriented mind, one would think it is not under military occupation or martial law.
Yet, under Mayor Emanuel, a former civilian volunteer on an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) base, and Garry McCarthy, the now former Chicago Police Superintendent (Emanuel fired him Dec. 1), it seems that parts of Chicago were treated as if they were occupied territory under police or paramilitary rule.
That is, under arbitrary martial law, just like the repressive martial law regime of the Israeli Defense Forces in the occupied territory of Palestine. Martial law or occupation law is arbitrary as it is not law, but is the manifestation of the occupying military commander’s “will.”
How could this be in the civilian government of Chicago? In part, because Police Superintendent McCarthy and the City of Chicago sought out and received training by Israeli occupation forces in “counter-terrorism” policing, that is, “pacifying” a population through aggressive intelligence gathering and the application of military force. Counter-insurgency is the term used for when this doctrine is applied by military forces.
This collaboration between Israel and U.S. police agencies, including Chicago, emerged after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. Since then, by one count, at least 300 high-ranking sheriffs and police from cities both large and small have received counter-terrorism training in Israel. For instance, in January 2003, 33 senior U.S. law enforcement officials from Chicago and other major American cities flew to Israel for sessions on “Law Enforcement in the Era of Global Terror.”
In 2009, Israel’s Midwest Consulate General co-sponsored “an intensive seminar” in Israel for senior Chicago police officials “on intelligence-led policing techniques.”
[ … ]
… over more than a decade, senior Chicago police officials have been studying Israel’s militarized police practices for how best to maintain a repressive military control over an occupied population living under permanent, strict martial, or occupation, law.
Why this matters is that Israel doesn’t have a domestic civilian policing model but instead applies a counter-insurgency policing model intended for a population under military occupation, or otherwise considered as hostile under martial law.
This policing model is being sold by Israel’s government to gullible or authoritarian-leaning U.S. police officials as a legitimate domestic policing model when, in fact, it is a military model of the sort used by militaristic, authoritarian regimes, customarily referred to as “fascist.”
You can read the rest for yourself. First a bit of nuanced correction to the article. What the author refers to as counterinsurgency (COIN) is not counterinsurgency, not in its classical sense, and certainly not in the modern sense. Just to take one example for purposes of illustration, the U.S. Marine Corps was very successful in the Anbar Province with COIN. Terrorists had been driven out, young men had jobs, weapons caches had been found, insurgents had been rooted out and killed, and much blood had been spilled, most of it not American.
The tactics, techniques and procedures were extremely aggressive, and if they are ever implemented in the U.S., it will be considered full blown war. What you see in Chicago today, and in Israel as well, is more correctly termed stability operations. The difference is important, not pedantic. The author has no idea of the kind of TTPs were used in Iraq (I do because my son was there in the thick of it), and if he did he wouldn’t use the term COIN.
But what the Marine Corps couldn’t accomplish is fixing millennia-old hatred over rights to succession between Sunni and Shia. What they couldn’t do is fix the seed of hatred and violence inherent in Islam. Thus, the root problem remains today. And this is the point of analogy between COIN in Iraq, stability operations in Israel and stability operations in Chicago.
While we aren’t dealing with millennia-old problems, we are in fact dealing with at least fourth or fifth generation entitlement, with fatherless families, SNAP payments, welfare, “free” medical care, and so on. Just enough government largesse to keep the inner city blacks on a leash, not enough (yet) to create revolution against it. And therefore the elites get their voting bloc, which is the intended outcome all along.
But the monster this created is ugly and difficult to control. I’ve read comments about the rioters in Ferguson, to the extent that any protest against “the man” (or the state) is a good thing and they must be our ally (I’m not sure who “our” is). Such a view is a sign of lack of attention to detail, immaturity and weakness of mind. Most of the rioters in Ferguson would sooner gut you groin to throat with a knife and then rape your wife and daughter as to look at you. Anyone who feels an alliance with the rioters in Ferguson is a fool.
This is a monster the government and effete urbanite elitists created. The hive is coming apart at the seems, and the only way to keep it together is harsher and harsher stability operations. Make no mistake about it. The Chicago Mayor knows all about the tactics in use in Chicago and approves of them. The firing of the chief of police was a sacrifice to the masses.
The lesson for us is that police departments are more and more using stability operations as a model or paradigm for their work, with the approval of those in charge. As these tactics want to work their way into the fabric of American society like a cancer, one goal will be to kill the cancer before it takes over the host. This battle will be gradual, fought initially on the fields of town hall meetings, boards, blogs, and so on. If the battles are lost there, it will expand, and if lost entirely, dystopia (and maybe insurgency) will come to the American countryside.
The wars for the inner city cannot be won. America is going broke and the largesse cannot continue forever. Sooner or later, the riots will expand. The more important thing will be what happens to the medium and smaller towns of America? Stability operations can lead to COIN if not successful (and couple this with Islamic terrorism and the influx from South of the border, and the potential for success seems bleak), and neither COIN nor stability operations is an acceptable model for this country.
On December 24, 2015 at 12:44 am, StukaPilot said:
this is why the current regime in the ‘Kwa is correctly termed a Zionist Occupation Government
On December 24, 2015 at 9:32 am, Blake said:
Herschel, the battle is lost.
Those in power know what is going on and either agree with these tactics or turn a blind eye.
Police state America is here. Don’t believe me? Run afoul of the bureaucracy of the government (Fed or State) and see what happens. The cops will show up, based on the determination of nameless faceless bureaucrat, and proceed to violate a whole list of rights because “they are just following orders.” After that, expect to be prosecuted with extreme prejudice by a DA who is trying to further his career.
Good luck fighting against the limitless resources of a State actor who is bound and determined to get a conviction, regardless of the rules of law and civil rights violations.
People plead out all the time in order to avoid bankruptcy. Cops and prosecutors use the process as punishment all the time.
On December 24, 2015 at 11:08 am, TimeHasCome said:
The former governor of Oregon called his state ” ungovernable” . We are seeing this all across the former America . That is why gun sales this month will top 2.5 million.
On December 24, 2015 at 12:17 pm, Archer said:
The former governor of Oregon called his state “ungovernable” and walked out, but that’s only half the story.
The other half is, eight years later, the people re-elected him.
You can’t fix a system full of bad actors if the voting population is full of idiots and/or true believers, who keep putting the bad actors back in power.
On December 24, 2015 at 12:25 pm, DARoberts said:
You know you live in a police state when the police do not suffer consequences for actions that mere citizens would be prosecuted for. (i.e. I shot him because I thought he had a gun.)
On December 24, 2015 at 1:00 pm, Dad29 said:
Perhaps instead of bitching about losing liberties on a blog site, people ought to actually do something about it like the patriots before us–running for office. Buying guns for the pipe dream armageddon, or throwing one’s hands in the air and claiming “let it burn” without lifting a finger to do anything about it? Well, those individuals and groups are also part of the problem.
On December 24, 2015 at 2:58 pm, Mike Fuller said:
That’s called “joining the system”, Dad. That’s exactly what keeps this system afloat. I wouldn’t run for office if I could start out at 6 figures.
On December 30, 2015 at 8:09 am, Phud Ogg said:
Perhaps that is your problem in understanding Dads point, right there, Mike.
You don’t serve your country for the money.
On December 30, 2015 at 9:10 am, Mike Fuller said:
I may have misunderstood his point although it is simple enough to comprehend his point seems to be, to paraphrase, ‘get off your comfortable asses and do something like run for office because other wise “you’re part of the problem” ‘.
I think it is possible you misunderstand mine, which I confess I did not make very well. My point is, the people in office ARE the problem.
Running for office and winning it is no measure of successful citizen/patriot duty
To rise to a political office in government in which you could actually influence national public policy – or have a national voice – requires allegiance to one or the other party, pretty much. Allegiance to party, at the national level, is akin to dancing with the devil in my estimation and as such is so abhorrent that even the prospect of the large sum of money they are paid would not be incentive enough..
We have allowed the political classes to amass power beyond their capacity to wield. The “butterfly-effect” of policies enacted 50 years ago have grown into monstrosities that are – as we speak – swamping our economy beyond its current carrying capacity.
Tarring and feathering the bastards, especially the lawyers, is the remedy of our patriot forefathers I’d most like to emulate, not more ineffective politics as usual.
On December 30, 2015 at 11:10 pm, Phud Ogg said:
Well said. I understand and agree. Yet, there are some who are changing the culture. Mia Love, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz come to mind, who dont seem to be “bought in”
On December 31, 2015 at 8:50 pm, Mike Fuller said:
They are patriot stars as you mention but against the backdrop of the massiveness of our highly centralized federal system they are spitting in the wind.
My favorite founding father is John Adams as he – and his wife – gave us so much written material with which to understand the events of his day. The trouble he had then, with parsing each word of the Constitution among his fellow congress members whom, after all, were patriots as devoted as he, was an agonizingly slow grind in achieving congressional consensus that could be parlayed into agreeable enough terms by the local constituencies.
Imagine how much more difficult that task is today with 330 million people and hundreds of thousands in government’s executive, legislative and judicial branches.
We’re about to be swamped by history.
On December 24, 2015 at 6:25 pm, Phil Ossiferz Stone said:
The guns aren’t for the zombie apocalypse. They are for individual and collective self defense — come what may, from whatever source and whatever direction.
On December 30, 2015 at 11:35 pm, Wake Up Dad said:
If voting changed anything, voting would be illegal. You are misguided Dad.
On January 1, 2016 at 2:12 pm, ruralcounsel said:
Not misguided. Deluded would be more accurate.
He’s clinging to a 1950’s civics version of government that is outmoded and pollyanish.
On December 24, 2015 at 4:11 pm, realitycheck said:
So, they’re have been 7 police related shooting deaths in Chicago for the year 2015. Yes, that’s right – 7. This is a city with a population of 2.7 million with a historic black/hispanic gang problem. And that’s what you call a ‘police state’, equating Chicago to being under arbitrary martial law?? What a pantload of hyperbolic crap.
http://heyjackass.com/
On December 24, 2015 at 9:39 pm, shawn said:
Obviously you’ve forgotten about the black sites Chicago police were using.
Don’t be blind to the documented abuses.
On December 24, 2015 at 6:07 pm, Pat Hines said:
Now for the soon to be newest “protection” afforded by the US government. Passports to be required to board flights from states that refused “Real ID” driver’s licenses. And, the IRS can revoke your passport should you owe them money above a certain amount, which is sure to morphed into “owing them any amount” in the very near future.
Tightening the net plays into the hands of southern nationalists and other resistance and secessionist movements.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2015/11/25/passports-required-for-domestic-travel-in-2016-but-irs-can-revoke-passports-for-taxes/
On December 30, 2015 at 8:03 am, Phud Ogg said:
Herschel, came here via AmericanDigest, via his lede “wars for the inner cities…”
Your point is CPD tactics wont work, because they are only a patch on the symptom of the deeper cause, urban black family dysfunction, brought on by generations of welfare dependency…paraphrased by LBJ’s supposed quote “have those n……s voting Democrat forever”
Careful quoting Mondoweiss. Much as I dislike Tiny Dancer and all that Progressivism v2.0 stands for, which you so ably point out is being demonstrated so well by the ChicagoThugz, I would only say, take care with sources, so you dont get the stink on you.
More here: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/04/conservative-revolutionaries-fascism
Another sign of the crack-up on the Left is how the nastiest of anti-semites and the Wright-Sharpton-Farrakhan race-baiters are allies now to take down Obama’s pals in Chicago. Karma.
On October 25, 2016 at 10:04 pm, bilejones said:
” a term which has fallen into disuse”
The term is desuetude.
A term which, itself, has fallen into disuse.