America’s Experience With Foreign Intervention

     Once again, our nation finds itself poised to use military force to cope with an evolving situation in the Middle East. After spending $2 Trillion and losing almost 5,000 soldiers to install an Islamic, Iranian-oriented state in Iraq, America is now being challenged to re-engage in the war-torn nation and help defend the Shiites from Al Queda extremists. We are coming to the awkward realization that, if we intervene in the conflict, we will be fighting alongside Iran, our mortal enemy. We are told that the advancing forces of ISIS are so evil they were kicked out of Al Queda but the situation is slightly more complicated. They actually are the extremists of Al Queda and are funded partly from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, just like Al Queda.

   The apparent use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war also faced the United States with a difficult conundrum. Should we have the moral stance and strike back against Bashir Assad, punishing his behavior and decreasing his capacity to carry on further attacks? Should we have sought further international support and try to resolve the issue diplomatically? The pathway we seek in these thorny issues will not be easy and the decision we make on our use of force could end up affecting us for many years to come.

Unfortunately, I don’t know the proper course of action in this difficult situation. But, as a student of history, I do know two things: (1) we should be dubious of the justification for military intervention and (2) Any use of military force in the Middle East is likely to be unsuccessful and counterproductive. Throughout human history, nations have gone to war to achieve various goals but the rationale for doing so has almost always been suspect. And when the bullets stop flying, the results are rarely what the participants wanted.

Americans are proud of our democracy and have often gone to war “defending” the principles of liberty and justice. In both World Wars, our participation was based on this broad rationale and Americans felt like we were carrying out a moral crusade by standing up to the forces of fascism and totalitarianism. Later research has shown that our participation in these two conflicts was somewhat more nuanced and other factors were involved that the public was not aware of. In most of our other conflicts, however, the justification for intervention was based on misdirection, misinformation and, let’s face it, just plain lies.

At the beginning of the 20^th Century, America was growing in wealth and prosperity and our nation was beginning to make its presence felt on the World stage. With oceans on both sides of us, we were insulated from the continuous warfare of Europe and most Americans felt we should stay out of foreign entanglements.

This changed overnight on February 15, 1898, when the American battleship Maine exploded and sunk in the harbor of Havana, Cuba. Suddenly, public outrage pushed the government into action.

People had already been subjected to information on supposed “atrocities” by the Spanish rulers of Cuba. Two of the biggest newspaper publishers in the country, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, were in a circulation war and both felt that a war would definitely boost readership of their newspapers.

Frederick Remington, working for Hearst, portrayed an incident where a Cuban woman was allegedly searched by Spanish authorities for rebel messages. The search actually happened but it was made by a female matron.

They began publishing inflammatory, fact-challenged reports of Spanish atrocities that whipped up enthusiasm for retaliatory action. Using a dopy-looking cartoon character called the “Yellow Kid,” Hearst pushed hard for war and the biased news reporting on the issue became known as “Yellow Journalism.”

The media of the time ignored facts and just printed information supporting a war.

Essentially, both publishers swayed US public opinion to believe that the Cuban people were being unjustly persecuted by the Spanish, and that the only way for them to gain their independence was through American intervention.
With the sinking of the Maine (blamed on the Spanish), The US declared war with Spain and our “Splendid Little War” took us to Cuba, the Pacific and eventually, to the Philippines. When the dust had settled, we had defeated the Spanish navy in Manila Harbor and America suddenly became a global power, with possessions all over the globe.

"Remember the Maine" became a rallying call for a generation of Americans who believed the explosion had been set by Spain.

But our grandiose vision of the American ascendency was marred by the fact that the outcome of the war did not exactly work out for the best. We found ourselves “nation-building” in the Philippines but our efforts were hampered by a 10-year insurgency that was eventually put down by brute force. It turns out Filipinos don’t like occupiers any more than Iraqis do.
 The World Wars, as has been mentioned were seen as much more “righteous” wars and deception doesn’t seem to play a large part in entering both conflicts but the desired outcome of both never materialized. Waged to make the World “safe for democracy,” these wars resulted in massive destruction, millions of deaths and economic devastation in Europe and Japan. Obviously, World War I failed in that the defeated nation of Germany was right back at it and within 20 years, democracy was threatened once again. World War II certainly didn’t defeat Democracy’s enemies, considering that after the war we just switched the Nazis for the Communists and just went right on fighting.
 Our foreign intervention really began picking up in the 1950s. Once we learned in Guatemala how easy it is to overthrow another country with covert action, we began to use the technique with other problem nations. When the democratically-elected President of Iran asked for a bigger percentage of oil profits being taken from his country, the US decided an intervention was necessary. Intelligence agents distributed propaganda, hired fake supporters and stirred up foment until the country’s leader was overthrown. 
   Our preferred substitute, The Shah of Iran turned out to be a brutal dictator, who used his elite intelligence unit, the SAVAK, to suppress all dissent and intimidate the country’s citizens. When the Shah was overthrown and American intelligence agents were taken captive, our nation was outraged that a foreign nation would challenge our supremacy and we have essentially been in a proxy war with Iran ever since. Pretty much all of our current problems with Iran go back to our misguided intervention in their own sovereign affairs in 1954. 
  Since Communism became such a perfect enemy, we began taking them on wherever we could across the globe, usually with negative consequences. Using the discredited “Domino Theory” past administrations argued that it was necessary to intervene militarily to stop the spread of this political scourge.

The military argued that all of Asia would fall to the Communists without our intervention.

Only America, it was argued, could stop the Communists from their plan to enslave the World. Americans were told that we must intervene in Korea, and later Vietnam, because the evil Communists would seize every other country in the World if we did not take a stand for democracy. In both cases, the U.S. suffered its first military “defeats” (although we liked to characterize them as a draw….). Especially in Vietnam we learned that there are limits to having massive military superiority.

Propaganda would have us believe America was "forced" to fight in Vietnam.

Deception was also used, of course, in getting us more entangled in Vietnam. Falsely claiming that one of our warships had been brazenly attacked by North Vietnam, the U.S. military convinced Congress, and a majority of Americans, that we must take a stand to defend democracy once more and punish the Vietnamese for their bad behavior.

It is said that LBJ carried around a copy of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to show anyone who challenged his authority to carry on the war.

     We all know how that one came out. Millions of deaths later, America quietly withdrew from the war-ravaged nation after having dropped more ordinance on this tiny Asian nation than had been dropped in all of World War II. Today, land mines and Agent Orange are still causing suffering in Vietnam.
After our embarrassing performance in Vietnam, the military needed an ego-booster so, in 1983, they conceived of an intervention that would make us all feel good but would pose little danger to our military forces. Ronald Reagan, who wanted to reinforce his image as a tough, no-nonsense leader, had been bothered when the liberal-leaning Maurice Bishop was elected President of this tiny, Caribbean nation. Why not get rid of this nuisance and show off our military prowess at the same time? U.S. intelligence agents whipped up opposition to Bishop and talked his opponents into taking action. 

  

News reporting made it seem like we were the saviors of this poor nation.

When the popular President was seized and executed, American troops flooded the island, claiming they were there to “protect” some American medical students studying there.

Propaganda was issued to let the people of Grenada know that we were there to "save" them from Communism.

  We got rid of Bishop, alright, but we were condemned by the United Nations, and our actions were considered "a flagrant violation of international law."The U.S. vetoed the resolution, of course. Over 5,000 medals were awarded for valor to American troops…..

The Grenada invasion might have helped US troop morale but it did little to affect the situation for the average residents of the island.

 I doubt there are any Americans left who don’t know that our involvement in Iraq was based on lies, in fact many of them. Bush administration officials, somehow beholden to a think-tank plan known as the New American Century, seemed to honestly believe that getting rid of Iraq’s President, Saddam Hussein, would usher in a new era of democracy in the Middle East. But their many falsehoods, including the supposed “weapons of mass destruction,” ties to Osama bin Laden, and the pending mushroom cloud dragged us into the conflict with bad intelligence, no Iraqi support and pretty much no plan for what happens afterwards.
   Of course, the lying about Iraq did not originate with George W Bush. His father also should share responsibility for involving us in this Middle Eastern country. Many have already forgotten that deception was used to get us involved in the first Iraq invasion. Americans were shocked by the testimony of an Iraqi young woman named Nariyah, who told the Congressional Human Rights Caucus that she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers entering a Kuwaiti hospital, seizing the baby incubators there and leaving the babies to die on the floor. The U.S., claiming to be standing up for standards of decency and human rights, intervened and brought us the first Gulf War.

Americans were horrified at Nariyah's vivid description of the inhuman killing of infants. They only learned later that the whole thing had been a lie.

  Later, it turned out that Nariyah was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States and that her false testimony had been provided as part of a propaganda effort to convince Americans to act. The entire story, of course, was false. 

     Although we did succeed in the stated goal of getting Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, most people would admit the issue was not really resolved by our actions. Hussein remained as the country’s leader and George W. Bush apparently felt the need to resolve the “unfinished business” of Iraq 12 years later. 

     So, as we ponder the decision to intervene once again in the affairs of yet another Middle Eastern country, we should consider our past experiences with military interventions. Based on our history, we should have learned to be highly-suspicious of the reasons and rationale for warfare and we must certainly question whether the expected results will actually turn out. In fact, our track record in Africa and the Middle East is so dismal, it’s hard to see how any military involvement could possibly make things better. For 50 years, America has squandered its wealth, prestige and human resources in one military action after another, all supposedly to advance the cause of democracy and economic advancement. What we have ACTUALLY achieved is a bankrupt economy, thousands of dead soldiers, millions of foreign victims, and a terrible loss of prestige around the World.

We've tried war many times but Peace - not so much!

     The belief that military might is necessary to achieve our goals must be seriously questioned at this point. The Pentagon would be hard pressed to come up with any successes they can point to when it comes to questions of national defense. We have consistently sought war when other ways to resolve crises have been available. Maybe it really is time to “Give Peace a Chance.”

Big Brother Comes of Age

     When George Orwell wrote his prophetic novel “1984” in 1948, he envisioned a society where all information was totally controlled, all citizens were under constant surveillance, and even THINKING negatively about the current conditions was considered a crime.

As the actual date of 1984 approached there was much speculation about whether Orwell’s chilling predictions would come true. Essentially, the nation breathed a huge sigh of relief when the magical year arrived with no “Big brother” cameras installed in people’s homes, no monitoring of public sentiment to detect unpatriotic speech, and no attempts to control information through language (what Orwell called “Newspeak”).

     Now, with the leaks of information suggesting new encroachments on our civil liberties, it looks like Orwell may have been right, it just took a few decades later than he thought to get there. 

Cameras now monitor our every movement in pretty much every public space. All residents now carry personal tracking devices which broadcast their location in real-time to anyone with the equipment to see it. Consumers have been convinced that it is better to store all of your personal data in “the cloud”, where it is easily accessed by government snoopers. The English language, itself, has been twisted so that words often mean exactly the opposite of what they are (e.g. “job creators”, “peacekeeper” missiles, “pro-life”) or totally innocuous words are used to describe horrible things. We use the word “drone”, for instance, when we actually mean “flying killer robot.” In many ways, it seems, we have reached the kind of society that Orwell warned us about.

     When the Washington Post reported that the National Security Agency has been routinely been gathering personal information on EVERYBODY, not just terrorists, we all seemed shocked, although we should have seen it coming. Ever since the beginning of the Cold War, a secret power has grown within the government. This hidden manipulation, by what Bill Moyers calls the “Invisible Government,” has grown continuously and after the events of 9/11 it expanded even more. This powerful force behind the scenes in our nation is 

The powerful forces of the military, CIA, NSA and agencies we don’t even know about have been pulling the strings behind World events totally outside all 3 branches of government for more than 50 years. President John F. Kennedy discovered it when he was informed of an imminent invasion of Cuba, something planned completely outside the Executive Branch. We learned about it in the 1980s when President Reagan secretly used the Intelligence agencies to sell arms to Islamic terrorists so he could raise money for his own terrorists in Nicaragua. Although today’s conservatives are falling all over themselves accusing the whole thing as yet one more nefarious plot by our Nazi/Commie/Fascist/Kenyan usurper to bring down the jack-booted thugs of the IRS on innocent civilians, this invisible government operates totally outside of the President’s control and began its work long before Obama came on the scene. 

     In fact, some of this is the result of the Republican Party, which took the lead after 9/11 in calling for the most aggressive intelligence operations. I watched many of the C-Span hearings when the rules for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) were being hammered out. In every case, the Republicans wanted to give intelligence agencies more authority and leeway than the Democrats, in fact they demanded it.

     It was at this point where America went off the rails.

     We all learned from High School civics that our unique 3-branch political system was designed to protect Americans from governmental abuse. With the addition of the Bill of Rights, our Constitution provided essential protections to Americans that we all take for granted today. The First and Second Amendments get discussed frequently, but it may be that the Fourth Amendment turns out to be the most important. This basically says that all Americans are free from unreasonable search and seizure unless there is PROBABLE CAUSE to believe they are committing a crime. The term “probable cause” has been well-defined in past judicial rulings and law-enforcement officers have been bound to follow its restrictions. If there is a suspicion that someone is engaged in illegal activity, the police must go to a judge, present evidence of that crime, and only then are allowed to intervene. Initially, this was the case with the FISA rules. Intelligence agencies had to make their case before a judge if they wanted to wiretap or search anyone because they had to follow rules laid down after the FBI/CIA abuses of the 1970s.

     Of course, probable cause had already been thrown out the window because of the drug war. Using the thinly-disguised excuse of “sobriety checks” ALL police agencies are now allowed to set up roadblocks anywhere, anytime and stop and search EVERY vehicle that comes by. The first thing they do is ask for “your papers.” The public hasn’t even noticed that this important protection has been removed.

     During the hearings on FISA legislation, intelligence chiefs assured Congress that the surveillance would NEVER involve Americans unless a terrorist’s phone calls were to or from an American’s telephone. The Republicans were not happy with this provision, saying that it hampered ongoing investigations into terrorism and they sought to get fewer restrictions on surveillance activities. The Bush administration was more than happy to support their efforts and very quietly, they removed the Fourth Amendment from the Constitution. This was done by a top-secret ruling which determined that from now on, the standard would be “reasonable suspicion” rather than “probable cause.” It may not seem like that much of a difference, but legally, reasonable suspicion is a loose, poorly-defined standard that essentially means that, if any intelligence official even suspects someone is a criminal or could in any way be associated with a terrorist, they are free to ignore the Fourth Amendment. Even if they are an American citizen. No evidence is necessary. No judge needs to be consulted. Nobody needs to be informed. They have been acting under this standard ever since.

     It should be no surprise, then that the intelligence agencies have interpreted this Patriot Act disaster to mean they are allowed to vacuum up information en masse, in the hopes that they may divine some future terrorist plot by doing so. No more probable cause. No more terrorist-only surveillance. No more judicial review. Add to this the fact that ALL parties involved (Verizon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.) are forbidden to even admit they have cooperated with the authorities, thus the denials by all of them that their data has been compromised. If they were to admit it, they would be subject to criminal prosecution, so it’s no surprise they all act like they never heard of it.

    To be fair, there are some problems with the Washington Post report. Their story outlines the PRISM project, which they claimed was the code name for this massive intelligence-gathering project. Their “evidence” was in the form of 4 leaked Top-Secret Powerpoint slides which seemed to suggest that the major Internet vendors were providing information to the government. There is a website listed on one of the slides which eventually gets you to the Federal Airline Administration’s vendor database, nick-named PRISM. The FAA page describes PRISM as just the gathering of information from Google and friends on its own government contractors and vendors, nothing even resembling the Post story. One of the Powerpoint slides also lists the entire PRISM project as costing only $20 million dollars, chicken feed for a massive data-gathering program that is vacuuming up huge amounts of personal data and storing it somewhere. Either the entire FAA/PRISM is a major misdirection funded by a black budget, or the Post found a few slides and inferred nefarious activity when the explanation was much simpler.

     At any rate, we are now faced with answering some tough questions about the future of our society. Will we try to put curbs on this practice of massive intelligence gathering? How much more of our civil liberties are we willing to give up? Can anyone put the genie back in the bottle? I have found that many Americans are unaware of this loss of liberty and have, in many ways, helped to bring it on. George Orwell would never have imagined that all you needed to do to follow somebody’s movements is give them some flashy toys with apps on it and they will willingly carry their own tracking device. We have all been seduced by the promises of “the Cloud” and are willingly shoveling mass amounts of our private data into online repositories where we have little control over it. We must demand more control over our own information or we may just end up living in the world that Orwell imagined…….

    

The Final Showdown on Gun Violence

 

     Like every other American, I was shocked, saddened, and angered by the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday. Just as in past mass shootings, the response has been more hand-wringing, calls for assault weapon bans and a search for the factors leading to such tragic consequences. In every past occurrence of firearm mayhem, I have bitten my lip and kept quiet about my feelings on the subject. Although my experience with guns is admittedly limited, I have many good friends who hunt and own firearms and I never wanted to take a stance that confronted their fervent belief that gun ownership was an important right that deserved to be protected.

     After the events this weekend, I can no longer stay silent on the subject. When a soldier, policeman or gang member dies as a result of gunfire, it is still tragic, but we accept their death as a possible outcome of their choice of occupation. When the victims are totally innocent 6 and 7-year olds, with an entire life ahead of them, we cannot blame the results on their own life choices.

     In an effort to take the focus away from firearms, the gun industry would rather blame this latest incident on mental illness. They have a point, but not a very good one. Republican lawmakers, who have been the biggest supporters of the gun industry, are also the biggest drivers behind reducing treatment options for mentally ill people. Making it easier to get a handgun than treatment for mental illness seems like a bad societal choice and those dead schoolchildren have paid the price for decades of budget-cutting and program eliminations.

If someone in America really wants a gun, it's not hard to get one.

 

The Gun Epedemic

     After every shooting, the public is confronted with the grim statistics: America, we are told, is awash in guns. There are four times as many licensed firearm dealers than there are grocery stores in the country. There are over six times as many gun dealers as there are McDonald’s Restaurants. Homicide rates from gunfire are outrageously high in the U.S (only South Africa, Columbia and Thailand have more.) Just in the last 8 years there have been almost a quarter of a million homicides and suicides due to guns. At times, the carnage from gunfire equals or exceeds that of actual warfare. In the first seven years of the U.S.-Iraq War, over 4,400 American soldiers were killed. Almost as many civilians are killed with guns in the U.S., however, every seven weeks. Since 1982, there have been at least 62 mass murders carried out with firearms across the country in 30 different states. More than 75% of the time, these killings are carried out with weapons that were purchased legally.

     How do we account for this? Why does America stand alone in its horribly high rate of firearm casualties? Are we just more naturally violent than other nationalities? Is there just some “evil” in our nation that warps the actions of some misguided citizens into perpetrating such atrocities as at Sandy Hook? Does our abnormally high rate of gun homicides (and suicides) reflect some deep, tragic flaw in our national psyche that inevitably results in such violent behavior?

     Most observers point to just the gun ownership statistics as the problem. There are just too many firearms, according to this point of view, and they are accessible to just about anyone who wants one. It’s been pointed out repeatedly that there are safety laws regulating all sorts of behavior but the restrictions on gun ownership are ineffective, incomprehensive and often easy to circumvent. The type of firearm, of course, is also significant and most recent attempts at “gun control” have focused on restricting access to certain types of firearms or ammunition deemed to be too dangerous for civilian use. While there certainly is a valid argument that semi-automatic weapons with high-capacity magazines have no real purpose for hunting and target shooting, I believe that pursuing “assault weapons” bans will have a negligible effect on the situation.

Weapons like this have no real purpose besides killing people....

     The real solution, I believe, is much harder than the superficial idea that the violent gun death problem can be solved by background checks and weapon bans. If you really want to understand our nation’s fatal attraction to firearms, we must challenge the prevailing beliefs that firearms actually solve problems and that the answer to the problem of having too many guns is to have more of them.

That's me, right rear, clutching my favorite weapon of mass destruction....

 My Own Journey

     As a kid, I loved guns. Like every other red-blooded American boy born in the decade following World War II, I loved playing “war” and fantasized about shooting down Nazis and Japs like the heroes I saw on TV and in the movies. One of the favorite pastimes of me and my buddies was to “shoot” each other and see who could die the most realistic and dramatic death. The 1950s were the peak period of the TV western and show after show featured ta brave lawman facing down the desperados with his shooting iron strapped on his hip. How I longed to be Matt Dillon, solving the problems of Dodge City with a rapid draw and unerring marksmanship.

                    

     Unfortunately, my parents did not share my fascination with firearms. My mother had a cousin who lost an eye in a shooting incident and she refused to allow even a BB gun to enter our household. To my knowledge, no one in my dad or mom’s family hunted, or even owned a gun. To be sure, I had some target shooting experience in the Boy Scouts but I never developed a relationship with firearms like many of my friends.

     That could have changed because of the Vietnam War, but a college deferment and a later high lottery number kept me out of the draft and into college. By that time, however, World events had changed my views on warfare and gun usage. The assassinations of political leaders and the imposition of military force on other countries caused me to question the use of violent intimidation as an effective means of solving problems and I began to see those days of adolescent war-making as “kid stuff” and my views on war and peace began evolving. Not long after I chose “Peace Studies” as a minor and began to formulate new ideas about violence and its effectiveness to achieve desired outcomes. Gradually, I became a proponent of pacifism and non-violence and have over the years come to believe that: (1) using force to achieve one’s ends rarely works in the long run and (2) guns NEVER solve problems. In almost every case, the use of violence to get one’s way creates new and additional problems that are even harder to solve.

Statistical Uncertainties over Concealed Carry

       Statistics on gun issues are all over the map. Both gun control advocates and opponents can line up apparently solid studies showing that guns do and do not cause violence. States and cities with tough gun control laws are shown as being ineffective in one study and successful in another. Comparisons of America with other nations with stricter and looser gun laws is often inconclusive about the role firearms, themselves, play in the issue. Gun advocates claim that as many as 2.5 million crimes are prevented each year by victims who use firearms themselves, although most of these cases involve just brandishing a firearm or threatening to use one. Other studies place the figure much lower and claim that such boasts of effectiveness are highly-exaggerated. Some studies how that murder rates decrease in concealed carry states while others suggest the opposite.

     This is important because right now, we seem to be “doubling down” on the response to these tragic mass shootings. Not surprisingly, the first response to these events by gun advocates is to INCREASE the number of guns at the crime scene. If teachers, were only armed, we are told, this would all be prevented. The same thing happened after the Virginia Tech massacre. Concealed Carry proponents repeatedly argued that, if Virginians had only been allowed to carry their own guns, the shooter would have been stopped by their quick actions. The police, not surprisingly, are not all that crazy about such a world. How would they have responded to the situation there if, after receiving reports of a gunman on campus, they arrive on the scene and find everyone they see brandishing a firearm.

 

     A similar thing happened after 9-11. The solution to airline safety, we were told, is to arm the pilots, as if putting more weapons in an airplane was a good idea. Putting aside the fact that airplanes usually fly at high altitudes and that ANY discharge of a weapon in a pressurized cabin could result in the immediate and gruesome death of everyone on board, we have to ask the question: how can the problem of having weapons on a plane be solved by adding more weapons to the mix? We would not want our untrained pilot shooting in an airplane, no matter what, and I think we could say the same thing for the brave teachers at Sandy Hook. They are teachers, not firearm experts, and their use of a firearm in a classroom, no matter what the circumstances, runs a risk of tragic consequences.

               

The Self-Protection Conundrum

     For several years, I had a firearm training simulator located next to my office. It was used extensively to train police recruits and to refresh training for veteran officers. Basically, trainees had a pistol attached to a computer and various scenarios were presented to the officer on a projection screen. They would have to make snap judgments about who is a threat and who is not. Even veteran police officers were humbled by the experience. Well-trained shooters often made the wrong call and fired at non-threatening subjects and their accuracy at hitting their target was not especially high, either. You might think you have the presence of mind to wake up instantly from a deep sleep, assess the threat from an intruder, and neutralize the perpetrator with your handgun but the more likely scenario is you could shoot your own child who is looking for a drink of water.

Let's hope this woman doesn't have any children.....

     This, of course, requires you to keep a loaded handgun by your bedside and the multitudes of Americans who have bought a gun for protection probably do so. Unfortunately, if you have children in the house, there should NEVER be a loaded firearm present; in fact to be entirely safe, ammunition and firearms should be locked up in separate locations to ensure maximum safety for your family. Such behavior, however, would make the fantasy of a nighttime shootout to take out an intruder pretty much impossible and therefore most people do not take even these simple precautions. Many innocent children have died as a result. This is incredibly ironic considering the most popular reason people give for keeping a gun at home is for protection of their family.

Adolescents, teen angst and easy access to firearms are a dangerous mix.....

 

    Incidentally, the Sandy Hook shooting was the result of a juvenile gaining access to weapons owned by his mother, who also presumably purchased them partly for her family’s safety. It does seem incredible that there are few regulations whatsoever for how firearms are to be stored in a home and only rarely have parents been held liable when their firearms are used illegally by their offspring.

 

Are you really making your kids safer by teaching them to fire a fully-automatic machine gun?

     Regardless of your feelings about the statistics on firearm safety, there is one correlation that has remained constant over the years. If you own a handgun, and that gun is ever used on a human being, the odds are much, much, MUCH greater that it will be used on you or someone you love rather than a “bad guy.” Firearm supporters conveniently ignore this fact when they discuss how safe we will all be when everyone we come into contact with is packing heat. Human beings can be cantankerous and people get into arguments over the most inconsequential reasons. Tempers flare, angers rise and disputes can often lead to violence. If alcohol is involved, the danger is even greater and the presence of a firearm in a charged situation can often be the catalyst for even more violence and often results in death and injury.

Ending It All

     Finally there is the problem of guns and suicide. Just in the last 8 years, over 140,000 people have ended their lives using a readily-available handgun. Depressed teenagers, veterans with post-traumatic shock syndrome, and mentally-ill people are allowed easy access to firearms and thus an easy way to “end it all.” Guns are quick, easy and irreversible. Suicide attempts using guns are almost always successful but many of the most widely used other suicide attempt methods have case fatality rates below 5%.

     Studies that compare states with high gun ownership levels to those with low gun ownership levels find that in the U.S., where there are more guns, there are more suicides. While having a handgun certainly doesn’t lead people to take their own lives, having one available sure makes it easier to carry it out once they have made the decision. This, too, is a price we pay to allow people unfettered access to firearms.

 

  The Search for Solutions

     After the funerals, the grief and the hand-wringing over the latest mass shooting, we face, as a nation, what to do next. The most likely scenario is that we will take a big sigh, express our sorrow and totally ignore the issue until the next shooting. So far, this technique has worked pretty well for the gun lobby. Enough accusations, misleading statistics and outrageous claims are thrown around to totally confuse the issue and essentially breed fear into every citizen of our nation. Fear sells weapons and if every American is terrorized, the sales of guns go through the roof.

 

     As mentioned before, we are likely to see some ineffectual attempts to ban some assault weapons or institute additional background checks. Personally, I do not believe any of these will have an appreciable effect on the situation. The “genie” is out of the bottle. We already have millions of guns around us and trying to round up all those firearms would, of course, be impossible and restricting access now is just too little, too late. Instead, we must accept the fact that we live in an ocean of weaponry and look to a more progressive approach. The solution to our problem is not “gun control”; it is changing the way we look at guns and their effectiveness in solving problems. As I have already stated, my belief is that guns NEVER solve problems, they just make them worse. This has been shown throughout history.

Law Enforcement Issues

      But don’t police solve problems when they use their sidearm in taking out a “bad guy” in the course of their duties? Not really. Leaving aside the instances where innocent bystanders are wounded or killed during shootouts, the use of a service weapon on a criminal brings a whole new crop of problems, sometimes for the officer, himself. Unfortunately, we have all seen so many movies where the policeman says “Stop, or I’ll shoot!” Even though officers are trained to NOT rely on their firearm as their main method of enforcement, in too many cases a pistol becomes a quick way to resolve a situation and shots are fired with the expectation that this will solve the problem. As I have already pointed out, even trained officers have a hard time accurately hitting their target and when they do, they often suffer, as well.

 

Sometimes a firearm death is harder on the shooter.....

     There are numerous studies now showing the enormous toll that an officer-involved shooting incident can take on the individuals involved, as well as the police department, itself. When a police officer kills a criminal in the course of duty, that individual has essentially short-circuited the judicial process. The split-second judgment that often has to be made sometimes results in the policeman being the judge, jury and executioner rolled into one and this often places a heavy psychological burden on the affected officer. Even when justified in using their firearm, many times officers must leave the force afterwards because they are unable to deal with the trauma and reality of taking another human’s life, no matter how justified. Actually, this exact thing happened to one of my best childhood friends who became a police officer but left the force after a shooting incident.

A Challenging Future

    It’s not surprising that we, as a nation, seem to believe that firearms are the solution to many of our problems. Consider the thousands of TV shows and movies that show the “good guys” always walking away from a gunfight. How many times have we seen the cavalry arrive and shoot all the Indians? Didn’t we learn that Sylvester Stallone won the Vietnam War (at least according to the body count of his movies)? As the bullets fly, the bad guys are killed, the town is saved, the victims are rescued and everything is resolved by the end of the show. Most of the credit usually goes to the effective use of the hero’s gun.

 

     Very rarely do those shows ever show the reality of gun violence. Even when hit by a stray bullet (bad guys can never shoot very well), the hero is usually just “winged” and often continues shooting back. Most of the multitudes of TV westerns refused to even show blood after the shootouts and so we get this collective notion that guns are this easy, no-mess way to solve problems. This effect, what I call “gunreality,” leads many Americans into thinking that firearms are some mystical, powerful force that can be used to bend other people to our will and achieve some mythical level of safety with no side effects or negative consequences.

 

     The only real solution to this controversy, in my way of thinking, is to challenge head-on this belief that guns are the way to keep us safe. Nothing could be further from the truth and, until our society faces this fact, out nightmare of unending mass murders will continue. For every cop show glorifying gun violence, we need a corresponding program showing the reality of it. If our citizens actually saw the blood and gore, if they witnessed the frantic attempts to save gunshot victims in the operating room, if they could see first-hand the trauma that a gun death causes to real people in our nation, I believe we could begin to turn around the idea that guns are “saviors.” In my fantasy, the informed citizen of the future will not have their guns taken away from them, they would not want them in the first place once they understand the dangers involved.

 

     The more likely outcome of all this is that we will go the other direction: more metal detectors, locked-down schools, militarized police and even more people carrying firearms. We have already seen Illinois become the last state to fall to the “concealed carry” fantasy that every American is safer when we are all armed to the teeth. Now, enthusiasts want restrictions lifted so that concealed guns can be carried into courthouses, bars and yes, even schools. (Just today I learned that Michigan Governor Rick Snyder will veto a bill he originally wanted to pass that allows concealed carry in churches and schools). Essentially, the plan of the NRA is to challenge every state’s restrictions, expanding the right to carry weapons into ANY venue, regardless of the danger. Eventually there will be so many exceptions that there will be no restrictions at all, which is their ultimate goal.

     As a nation, we could use this tragedy as a wake-up call and move towards a society with common-sense gun laws and reasonable restrictions on gun access. We should at least apply the same level of regulation as we do our electrical appliances. We should understand that individuals with mental problems need treatment options that help them relieve stresses that sometimes result in violent behavior. Rather than glorifying gun ownership, we should warn the public about it and instigate more widespread programs on gun safety and appropriate usage. It wouldn’t hurt to challenge the most often used line of the NRA that “Guns don’t kill, people do.” Actually, guns DO kill people and, until enough Americans come to believe it, we are probably doomed to yet more of these horrific incidents. I am still optimistic enough, however, to believe that we can still turn it around and make the World a better place. I just hope I’m still around to see it……

 

 

   

   

  

    

Violence and the Labor Movement

     Republicans are apoplectic. For the first time in almost a half century, the labor movement is re-awakening and fighting back against the attempts of the wealthy to marginalize the American worker and amass huge fortunes on the backs of the working class.
     As Michigan lawmakers prepared to ram through a bill to destroy the labor unions that helped make their state a symbol of American industrial prosperity, labor organizers took to the streets and large numbers of protestors surrounded the capitol building. Attempting to make Michigan the 24th state to adopt "Right-To-Work-For-Third-World-Wages" legislation, the Governor thumbed his nose at the protestors and bragged about his attempt to pass a law that could reduce the pay of every worker in the state. Knowing they would not have the votes to pass it in January, Republicans fast-tracked the bill, giving no opportunity to even discuss it and passed it with no public hearings or input.
     We have seen it all before. Even a casual reading of history reveals a bitter war between labor and capital that has been carried out ever since the founding of our Republic. Given the life-or-death consequences of economic policies, it is not surprising that confrontations between workers, business owners and politicians have often led to violence. This week's protest was no exception.
     Because the public was shut out of the process entirely, it is not surprising that tempers flared during this week's protests. In any crowd of that size it is not hard to find examples of people behaving badly and video cameras caught a confrontation between Conservative comedian and activist Steven Crowder and several union members. In the ensuing scuffle, Crowder was punched in the face and a tent being occupied by Americans for Prosperity, a pro right-to-work group was knocked down.

Fists fly at the altercation in Michigan.

     Conservatives have gone ballistic. Tired of being called flunkies of the 1% and sensitive to any criticism of their selfish behavior, their bloggers, politicians and talking heads have seized on this incident as finally giving them some "higher ground" to shout from. Immediately, the cries of "Union Thugs" went out and has reverberated throughout the Internet. A search for the term in Google returns 2.7 million hits. For the first time in years, Republicans can pretend that their supporters hold the moral high ground aginst the onslaught of evil union "thugs" out to destroy the nation just to maintain their exorbitant compensation.
     I don't condone violence to achieve political goals, so I hated to see such an event happen. I do know a little bit about history, though, and, given the scale of past labor conflicts, it seems like the events in Michigan were pretty insignificant, unlike what you will hear on Fox "News."
     In almost every case of labor strife in the last 150 years, it has been the "company thugs" who have carried out the most egregious violence against workers. Labor strikes, sit-downs and picketing have been met with clubs, guns and lynchings. When the scale of the protests become too large, business owners appealed to the government to help them and many times Federal troops have been used against strikers, often with fatal results.
     Here is just a partial list of past incidents of labor violence. Although there have been a few incidents of violent behavior coming from the workers, by far most of the violence has been perpetrated ON them not BY them.

Past Labor Violence

 23 November 1887
     The Thibodaux Massacre. The Louisiana Militia, aided by bands of "prominent citizens," shot at least 35 and possibly as many as three hundred unarmed black sugar workers striking to gain a dollar-per-day wage, and lynched two strike leaders.

Attacks on Chinese workers at Rock Springs, Wyoming 1885

1894
      Federal troops killed 34 American Railway Union members in the Chicago area attempting to break a strike, led by Eugene Debs, against the Pullman Company. Debs and several others were imprisoned for violating injunctions, causing disintegration of the union

10 September 1897
      19 unarmed striking coal miners and mine workers were killed and 36 wounded by a posse organized by the Luzerne County sheriff for refusing to disperse near Lattimer, Pennsylvania. The strikers, most of whom were shot in the back, were originally brought in as strike-breakers, but later organized themselves.

12 October 1898
      Fourteen were killed, 25 wounded in violence resulting when Virden, Illinois mine owners attempted to break a strike by importing 200 nonunion black workers.

12 October 1902
      Fourteen miners were killed and 22 wounded by scabs at Pana, Illinois.

 

Police use clubs to make way for a streetcar during a strike in new York City.

8 June 1904
      A battle between the Colorado Militia and striking miners at Dunnville ended with six union members dead and 15 taken prisoner. Seventy-nine of the strikers were deported to Kansas two days later.

22 August 1909
     Pressed Steel Car Company in Pittsburgh calls in 200 state constables and 300 deputy sheriffs to insure the safety of strikebreakers and to evict strikers from company houses. Their actions result in the death of at least 12 people, and perhaps as many as 26.

May 1911
     The Westmoreland Coal Miners' Strike in Pennslyvania was met by fierce resistance from company "thugs." During the strike, six striking miners, nine wives of striking miners, and one bystander were killed, and thousands of strikers and members of their families severely beaten or wounded.

24 February 1912
     Women and children were beaten by police during a textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Miners face off against a wall of bayonets during the textile strike in Lawrence.

 

20 April 1914
      The "Ludlow Massacre." In an attempt to persuade strikers at Colorado's Ludlow Mine Field to return to work, company "guards," engaged by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and other mine operators and sworn into the State Militia just for the occasion, attacked a union tent camp with machine guns, then set it afire. Five men, two women and 12 children died as a result.

Hole where bodies of 11 children and 2 women were recovered from after fire at Ludlow Tent Colony

 

19 January 1915
     World famous labor leader Joe Hill was arrested in Salt Lake City. He was convicted on trumped up murder charges, and was executed 21 months later despite worldwide protests and two attempts to intervene by President Woodrow Wilson.

19 August 1916
      Strikebreakers hired by the Everett Mills owner Neil Jamison attacked and beat picketing strikers in Everett, Washington. Local police watched and refused to intervene, claiming that the waterfront where the incident took place was Federal land and therefore outside their jurisdiction. (When the picketers retaliated against the strikebreakers that evening, the local police intervened, claiming that they had crossed the line of jursidiction.) The official I.W.W. toll was listed as 5 dead and 27 wounded.

Some of the victims of the Everett massacre.

12 July 1917
      After seizing the local Western Union telegraph office in order to cut off outside communication, several thousand armed vigilantes forced 1,185 men in Bisbee, Arizona into manure-laden boxcars and "deported" them to the New Mexico desert.

Marching from Lowell, Deportation of I.W.W's July 12, 1917

27 July 1918
     United Mine Workers organizer Ginger Goodwin was shot by a hired private policeman outside Cumberland, British Columbia.

Federal troops demonstrate their tools for protecting strikebreakers in 1918.

11 November 1919
      The Centralia Massacre. Violence erupted when members of the American Legion attempted to force their way into an IWW hall in Centralia, Washington during an Armistice Day anniversary celebration. Four Legionnaires were shot dead by members of the IWW, after which IWW organizer Wesley Everest was lynched by a local mob.

19 May 1920
     The Battle of Matewan. Despite efforts by police chief (and former miner) Sid Hatfield and Mayor C. Testerman to protect miners from interference in their union drive in Matewan, West Virginia, Baldwin-Felts detectives hired by the local mining company and thirteen of the company's managers arrived to evict miners and their families from the Stone Mountain Mine camp. A gun battle ensued, resulting in the deaths of 7 detectives, Mayor Testerman, and 2 miners. Baldwin-Felts detectives assasinated Sid Hatfield 15 months later, sparking off an armed rebellion of 10,000 West Virginia coal miners at "The Battle of Blair Mountain," dubbed "the largest insurrection this country has had since the Civil War"

22 June 1922
     Violence erupted during a coal-mine strike at Herrin, Illinois. Thirty-six were killed, 21 of them non-union miners.

14 June 1924
     A San Pedro, California IWW hall was raided; a number of children were scalded when the hall was demolished.

25 May 1925
      Two company houses occupied by nonunion coal miners were blown up and destroyed by labor "racketeers" during a strike against the Glendale Gas and Coal Company in Wheeling, West Virginia.

21 November 1927
      A fight broke out between Colorado state police and a group of striking coal miners, during which the unarmed miners were attacked with machine guns. It is unclear whether the machine guns were used by the police or by guards working for the mine. Six strikers were killed, and dozens were injured.

4 May 1931
      Gun-toting vigilantes attack striking miners in Harlan County, Kentucky. As of May 1932, eleven people had been killed: five deputies, four miners, a labor activist and a local storekeeper sympathetic to the strikers.

Bayonets keep striking Harlan pickets at bay.

7 March 1932
      Police kill striking workers at Ford's Dearborn, Michigan plant.

10 October 1933
      18,000 cotton workers went on strike in Pixley, California. Four were killed before a pay-hike was finally won.

1934
      The Electric Auto-Lite Strike. In Toledo, OH, two strikers were killed and over two hundred wounded by National Guardsmen. Some 1300 National Guard troops, including included eight rifle companies and three machine gun companies, were called in to disperse the protestors.

Funeral procession for the two men killed during strike of 1934

1 September - 22 September 1934
      A strike in Woonsocket, RI, part of a national movement to obtain a minimum wage for textile workers, resulted in the deaths of three workers. Over 420,000 workers ultimately went on strike.

30 May 1937
      Police killed 10 and wounded 30 during the "Memorial Day Massacre" at the Republic Steel plant in Chicago.

Troops confronting miners on a railroad track 1939

20 April 1948
      Labor leader Walter Reuther was shot and seriously wounded by would-be assassins.

UAWs organizers Walter Reuther and Richard Frankensteen afterr beating during an unsuccessful attempt to organize the Dearborn plant 1937

5 April 1956
      Columnist Victor Riesel, a crusader against labor racketeers, was blinded in New York City when a hired assailant threw sulfuric acid in his face.

3 November 1979
      Five labor organizers were killed at the Greensboro Massacre in Greensboro, North Carolina. A rally organized to protest recruitment by the KKK and American Nazi Party at Cone Mills and various other textile mills in the area, where workers were attempting to organize across racial lines, turned violent, resulting in the deaths of the organizers. It was subsequently revealed that U.S. government CIA collaborators marched alongside the KKK and Nazi collaborators, and that the Greensboro Police Department, an agent of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, and a paid FBI informant were all aware of the potential for violence, yet did nothing to prevent it (surprisingly, there was not a single police officer present at the rally).

Medical workers treat a strike victim in 1934 

     As this long, but uncomplete, list illustrates, there has been no shortage of violence in labor disputes. It has not been the unions, however, who have caused it. The myth of the "union thug" is a fantasy of the right wing, who wants everyone to think the worker is the problem. Considering the hundreds of worker deaths and the many acts carried out against them and their families, it seems ludicrous to paint the labot movement as being bent on violence. Hopefully, the oppressive legislation being adopted by so many states will wake up the unions even more and re-kindle the organizing spirit that led to the rise of labor unionism and the subsequent creation of the American middle class.ng with