EVERY LIFE MATTERS: BLACK, BROWN AND BLUE

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

PROTESTORS PEACEFULLY WALK ACROSS THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE

OTHER DEMONSTRATIONS IN NYC SAW SOME ARRESTS

TAGS: ANTI-POLICE PROTESTS, ANGER AT GRAND JURIES IN FERGUSON AND STATEN ISLAND,

DEMONSTRATIONS COAST TO COAST, ENDEMIC DISTRUST OF LEC

 IN BLACK AND LATINO COMMUNITIES, OLD SCARS TORN OPEN BY

IGNORANCE, BIGOTRY, AND PREJUDICE ON BOTH SIDES OF THE DIVIDE,

CHANGE CALLED FOR BUT WHAT KIND OF CHANGE WOULD BE FEASIBLE,

REASONABLE AND RELATIVELY RAPIDLY IMPLEMENTED?

 

(NEWS ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY)

(Friday December 12, 2014 South Bronx, NYC)  At rare times in our history an event or series of events occur that serve as the “tipping point”, the heavy weight perched out on the end of a limb that causes that limb to break.  The events that have been covered in the media exhaustively and we are by now  rather familiar with  as well as the  details of similar events seem to have ignited what could be a “movement” except it is unclear what kind of a movement it should be.

We have witnessed as the breathless personalities occupying the “newsertainment” cable networks have provided round the clock coverage of the nationwide protests that have been staged in cities from coast to coast. They have no shortage of scholars, experts, pundits and hacks available for on-air discussions and debate which are typically efforts in futility.

Four recent incidents of White Police Officers shooting and killing unarmed young Black men has torn open the ugly knotted scar on our nation’s underbelly and has released a putrid mix of long standing prejudice, virulent bigotry, racism, and the pervasive sense of frustration and anger on both sides of the divide.  It is fair to say that our racial divisions are as wide today as they were in 1964.  But this is not primarily about Black people and White people.  It is however all about Black people and White Police Officers.  It is about the belief that many Black people hold tightly to: they believe their lives don’t matter; they believe White Law Enforcement Officers can shoot and kill them with impunity, without any consequence of substance.  This belief creates an additional degree of friction between the policed and the Police; a friction that is dangerous for all involved.

So, on one side stands the predominately White Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA’s) and their behavior in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods, Precincts and entire smaller towns like Ferguson Missouri where a 67% Black population of 30,000 residents are policed by a force of 54 Officers only four of whom are Black.  What may come as a surprise to some and stands firmly against and contrary to public opinion, the 34,000 member NYPD has a “majority minority” composition.  Approximately 51% are non-Caucasian.  So it is more than a statistical likelihood that a person interacting with an NYPD Officer will be looking into faces that are Black, Brown, Asian or some other non-White ethnicity.   

Not only is the Law Enforcement Community (LEC) distrusted by Black people but more alarmingly, our entire criminal justice system; they have lost all faith in the Grand Jury mechanism of criminal indictment, and the Courts in general are viewed by far too many Black and Latino men as discriminatory and dysfunctional.  Agree or disagree, it is not difficult, if considered objectively, to understand why they have the beliefs they do and why they feel as they do.  Long simmering tensions boiled over after two Grand Juries returned “no indictment” verdicts for the White Officers who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner on New York City’s Staten Island.  The death of Mr. Garner was particularly enraging since his attempted arrest and his verbal and physical resistance to arrest was partially captured by a young man on his cell phone video camera.  The whole world has been able to see that tense scenario escalate to the point it did and it is a fair question to ask if the Officers involved had handled the situation properly.

(The Brooding Cynyx have never hidden the fact that our affiliation, association, affinity and support has always been and remains solidly with the NYPD.)

THE SOCIAL COMPACT

Much of our criminal justice system is based on old English jurisprudence as defined in the Magna Carta.  We have established our own version since the birth of our nation by legal precedent and rulings by the Courts up to and including the Supreme Court, the highest legal body in the land.  Our brand of criminal justice has evolved over the years and it was often only after repeated unlawful acts by Law Enforcers, the efforts of agents for change, the recognition of “gaps” in the system that it has been malleable enough to adapt.  It has only been since 1966 that the “Miranda Warning” became codified after a Supreme Court ruling in the case known as “Miranda vs The State of Arizona” and is now an integral component of a suspect’s rights.

There has long existed an unwritten but widely acknowledged compact between Law Enforcement and the public.  After all, the Police do not keep “law and order”; it is the concept of the Police that keeps law and order for the most part.  In a country of over 400 million diverse, disparate citizens there are approximately 700,000 men and women actively employed by Law Enforcement Agencies.  This number includes Federal Officers from a wide variety of Agencies, to the levels of State, County, and Municipal or otherwise local Departments.  This comparative equation illustrates just how thin the “Thin Blue Line”, a term for Law Enforcers writ large, is in the United States today.  Obviously we cannot have Officers present on every corner in every city; resources are often stretched very thin and without adequate funding it is often difficult for Departments of any size to properly recruit, screen, and train personnel.

And so it is easy to see given the complexity of our society and the nature of certain aspects of our culture, that it is the concept of the Police that prevents society from widespread wanton criminality.  We live in a fast-paced, violent culture with an increasing admixture of belligerence, disrespect, as well as all the societal ills that persistently plaque large portions of our populace.  For decades scholars and researchers from a broad array of disciplines have researched, studied and documented the relationships between social ailments and criminality.  Sadly, for far too many of our fellow citizens, not much has improved their lot appreciably despite decades of government programs some of which were well meaning but were essentially nothing more than ill-conceived programs of social engineering.

A fundamental component of this social compact is that law abiding citizens are permitted to live freely while pursuing the full complement of needs and desires from housing, education and employment up through the inalienable rights as written in our Bill of Rights.  This also includes tacitly, the right to live as one pleases provided one’s pursuits do not infringe on those of another. Life in a civil society comes with some responsibilities particularly in certain areas of individual actions in public places.  A prime example of this comes from a Supreme Court ruling in 1919 regarding free speech.  Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes used the metaphor of “falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater” as an example of a point where one’s freedom of speech has a negative impact on many others and thus, as a breech of social order, may be criminal.

Our basic Constitutional rights naturally extend to the degree that our society protects us all from illegal search and seizure, harassment from members of the LEC in that there must be “probably cause” prior to an Officer initiating contact with a citizen.  It appears that the majority of Black Americans see this last provision as a “joke” while in their minds and hearts they believe that they can be stopped while just simply  walking down the block, congregating on the corner or “driving while black”.  There is ample evidence to fortify their beliefs but there is, as there always is, another side to that perspective.

THROUGH BLUE TINTED GLASSES

When the majority of an entire demographic stratum is possessed of an endemic distrust of the LEC, the criminal justice system and the way they are treated by authorities in those roles, our entire nation has a problem: it is not merely an issue between young Black men and White Law Enforcement Officers (LEO’s). This level of distrust puts the lives of the innocent and the guilty, of young Black unarmed men and White armed police Officers in peril.  As Abraham Lincoln said in his famous 1958 speech as a Senate candidate from Illinois, “A house divided against itself cannot stand”, and what we must recognize today is the sad fact that we remain, all these years later, a house very much divided along several deep fissures of race, employment, education, income, and opportunity.  Add to this context a segment of the population who see the LEC as an occupying force, and it is a recipe for disaster.

In the ongoing public demonstrations in cities across the USA the focus of the protestors is “Police brutality” and “Police misconduct” with the de facto element that virtually all LEO’s are White, many of them racist, brutal, and too quick to draw conclusions based on scant probable cause.  The protestors argue that the Prosecutors are too close to the Police and that it is nearly impossible to have a Police Officer ever face charges no matter what the infraction or action.  They cite the Grand Jury non-indict verdicts in Ferguson and Staten Island as the living proof of what they belief to be harsh reality. 

One element of the recent protests and media-hosted debates is that there is no lack of data, research, and statistics that can be cited to bolster the arguments of each side. While much of this information is flawed and corrupted by faulty methodology, inherent bias on the part of the researchers, and all too pliable statistics, there are some raw numbers that are undeniably straightforward. Yet, what must be kept in mind when citing the raw numbers is the per capita population ratio between Black and White Americans, Black men involved in Black on Black crime, White men involved in White on White crime as well as the likelihood a Black man has at some time in his early life of having a negative encounter with a LEO.  Actual, reliable statistics are notoriously hard to come by since each jurisdiction seems to classify method and mode of death differently, they each have their own internal classification systems, and a number of other factors make it very difficult to find accurate statistics that account for young Black unarmed men being shot or shot and killed by White Officers.

There is no excuse for Police brutality and abuse of any kind.  One missing cog in the gears of this discussion is the prevalence of illegal firearms on the streets of the inner City.  Legal gun ownership is a Constitutionally guaranteed right as well it should be but the problem is with the guns in the hands of people who could never apply for legal ownership. This proliferation of illegal guns in the hands of people who use them for criminal activities adds a serious component to many interactions between a Police Officer and a citizen.   In America, on average, every 58 hours a Law Enforcement Officer is killed in the line of duty and many of these deaths are delivered by illegal guns.  Despite this fact it is extremely difficult to discuss any form or type of measures that would have a relatively reasonable chance of being effective when it comes to "gun control".  It is especially – almost irrationally challenging -  discussing anything related to the ownership and the availability of firearms even among the vast majority of legal gun owners who are lawful people; those who hunt for sport, target shoot and some who own for self-defense and for the protection of their families and property.  There is no one in government that aspires to take the guns away from their legal owners but thanks to a strong NRA lobby, guns remain a sacrosanct topic in most of the country and could spell the end of many a politician's career.

Every life is valuable and the members of the LEC go to work day in, day out, serving their respective communities always with the intent of protecting the public, being pro-active when possible to interdict crime before it happens, and otherwise “do the right thing”.  They often face those who roam with criminal intent and are called into dangerous scenarios involving seriously emotionally or psychologically disturbed people, people who have no regard for life, and others who roam the streets as predatory opportunists ready  pounce on an unsuspecting victim.  Often an Officer places him or herself in between the danger; that is part of the Compact they are bound by.  What is being obscured in the rancorous debates, protests, and demonstrations is that the percentage of Officers that demonstrate or have demonstrated brutality of any kind in the past or present is extremely small just as is the number of Officers involved in shooting situations.  This recent cluster of Police killing unarmed Black men is not at all representative of some broader, more ominous pattern of behavior or intent.

NOW WHAT?

We have lived through many tragic events that were viewed at the time as being seminal moments in our recent history only to prove they “didn’t have legs”; they were brief moments of national concern and discourse but they soon faded from the headlines and the national conscience.  It has been two years since the brutal school shooting in Newtown Elementary School in Connecticut where the lives of 26 first and second graders were lost.  Despite all the outcry at such a heinous, cold blooded attack on those young innocents, no real changes have been enacted.  If an event such as that could not foster an atmosphere of willingness in Congress and Statehouses, what will?

Regarding the issue at hand, some are calling for more transparency in the investigatory process that follows a Police shooting.  Others are demanding a total overhaul of the Grand Jury system.  Various politicos are advocating for “better training” for LEO’s, to have “independent prosecutors” conduct Grand Jury proceedings whenever an Officer kills a citizen or anytime a suspect dies in Police custody.  Some of these are knee-jerk reactions while others have some degree of merit and should be studied. 

One thing is certain; we cannot as a society continue on in a climate of perpetual protest, unrealistic notions of immediate change, nor can we simply scrap parts of the criminal justice system because of an isolated number of unpopular Grand Jury non-indict decisions.

Yes, every life matters, every one of us was once some mother’s son.  What will it take to establish some measure of trust between the Black and Latino communities and the Police?  It is hard to say.  But, it is likely that another shooting incident between the Police and an unarmed citizen may occur before any change will be adopted to restore the faith in the Black and Latino communities  for the criminal justice system.  These are perilous days; we are torn and bleeding as a society, often callous and impatient as a culture.  What we need most now is to step back from the brink, take a deep breath, engage in a positive manner and, above all be patient.  Remember change does not come quickly in America even when, at times like this, there is such an urgent hunger among so many for change they can see and feel.

RELATED LINKS

http://broodingcynyx.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-police-job-and-questions.html

http://broodingcynyx.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-us-versus-them-mentality-and.html

http://broodingcynyx.blogspot.com/2012/10/bronx-lives-manhattan-deaths.html

http://broodingcynyx.blogspot.com/2012/09/nypd-under-gun-again.html

http://broodingcynyx.blogspot.com/2011/05/mayday.html

http://broodingcynyx.blogspot.com/2009/07/black-nypd-officer-shot-responding-to.html

 Copyright The Brooding Cynyx 2014 © All Rights Reserved

TWO COPS WALK INTO A BAR…

THERE IS NO PUNCHLINE, JUST SOME REALITY

THE BANALITY OF RACISM:

WE ARE ALL HUMAN

This is not the bar in the story but is pretty close to it

TAGS: NYC, NYPD, SOUTH BRONX, WASHINGTON HEIGHTS,

TWO COPS, RACE RELATIONS, PD INTERACTIONS WITH PUBLIC,

NYC IN DARKEST DAYS – 1970’S-1980’S,

HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED,

A STORY

(Sunday December 14, 2014 Washington Heights, NYC) It was a dive bar, more akin to a corner saloon than a bar.  It was the kind of place where the top shelf liquor had been replaced by the rotgut well booze.  There had been an even seedier bar a block south back in the years they worked this neighborhood but that had long ago changed into a nail salon that did hair weaves, sold wigs, and had a worn out bookie taking the street number asleep in the back room 24/7.  The place was pretty much empty at the time they arrived; just a few old Dominican guys working off the hangovers they’d bought last night.  Despite the Citywide ban on smoking in public places like restaurants, diners and bars, the ashtrays on this particular bar looked like they’d not been emptied since the last time the Giants actually won a game.  They were winning on this day though.

They sat drinking ice cold bottled beer not speaking to each other, just watching the game.  They were comfortable in each others silence. This was the natural result of having known each other since the neighborhood back when they were scrawny, wiry kids playing in the brick strewn lots and partially burnt out husks of what were at one time beautiful brick pre-war five story walk-ups.  They grew up a block apart along a stretch of Fox Street in The South Bronx just as that once desirable Borough was in the process of becoming “The South Bronx”.  They attended different high schools, he went to a Catholic School, his buddy, the local public high yet they remained friends throughout which, at times, was not without problems.

 

THE FOX STREET OF THEIR YOUTH

 

His buddy did a stint in the Army after high school and served in some remote base in Texas in a unit of the Military Police. He went to college during those same years enabled to do so by a modest scholarship and a generous work-study program supplemented with a few hours a night in the produce section of the A&P on Jerome Avenue.  Every time his buddy came home on leave they would meet up and go out somewhere “downtown”, somewhere in Manhattan.  His buddy would tell him stories about his MP duty in far southwest Texas while he would talk a little about college and that his mind was beginning to open somewhat.  It seemed to him that it was important to get an education but was not precisely sure why.  He had no major in his first years just drifting through taking courses that seemed interesting to him.  His buddy said he planned to take advantage of the GI Bill once his Army tour was over and said he thought he might like to be a cop. 

*****     *****

January 1981 was one of the coldest months in the history of New York City.  While everyone dealt with the brutal arctic blast and anxiously await the Spring, they would be in for a more bracing reality than anything yet delivered by Mother Nature.  By July 1981 crack cocaine and drug-related crime, an enormous homeless population, and a pitifully stagnant economy had rendered our Great City a boiling unsettled caldron that would continue to simmer for the rest of the decade.  It was into this toxic mix that he and his friend found themselves newly minted rookies with the NYPD.  They had made it through the Academy and both were selected to work with “The Big Boys”, a term that distinguished the main NYPD force from both the Housing and Transit Police Divisions. (The first Bill Bratton, the Bratton who served as NYPD Commissioner under Mayor Giuliani until this City got too small for both of them ) did away with those distinctions and united all rightfully into a consolidated, singular NYPD with Housing and Transit Patrol Bureaus in 1992.  It was now that their real training would begin and, for the next seven years they would still be regarded by their peers as rookies.  The older Cops believed it took a rookie seven years to mature out in the streets, seven years of baptism by fire to attain the level of street smarts, instincts, and effectiveness the Job required and to earn the trust of the older fellas that is so vital to how pairs of Cops work.

As fate would dictate they were both assigned to the same Precinct.  The NYPD once made aware of personal friendships between Cops, in those days did their best to have them assigned to the same Precinct.  They did not, however, extend this “courtesy” to members of the same family.  No brother would be assigned to the same Command as his brother.  It was in recognition of the dangers of the Job that prohibited the possibility of two members of the same family finding themselves in mortal danger.  A mother should not lose two sons on the same day from the same incident but it was different than with lifelong friends.

*****     *****

As they sat quietly nursing their drinks and smoking the place began to fill up.  Soon the atmosphere was loud; full of laughter and easy banter among the regulars.  While neither of them knew anyone in the bar personally, they would catch a glimpse of a familiar face in the mirror behind the bar.  When eyes met there were almost undetectable nods of recognition.  Both he and his friend had spent years working in this neighborhood and, just like Cops, the denizens of the streets and hot summer nights had good memories for faces.  Despite the toll the years had taken on their faces, they were all still recognizable to each other. None of the familiar faces came over to them to say hello or share a drink; they were, after all, on different sides of the fence.  If anyone in that bar harbored long standing resentment or anger towards either of them they were wise enough to keep it concealed and to themselves.  They may have been two middle aged men having some Sunday afternoon drinks in a shithole bar in Washington Heights but, they were Cops.

As the Giants struggled on TV they began to talk about current events; the circumstances and happenstance that seem to have thrust their City into disarray.  Nightly demonstrators and protestors were taking to the streets; some obstructing traffic, others staging mass “die-ins” at key intersections throughout the City, while others marched and chanted demanding “justice” and “respect”; some calling stridently against the NYPD and the “brutal practices” and “patterns of abuse” that they believed granted White Police Officers the license to kill “people of color” indiscriminately. 

It was at this point in their discussion that they looked at each other and began to laugh.  They laughed hard for a minute or two amused by the recent rhetoric in the papers and on TV.  They were, at this point in their careers, considered by many as dinosaurs; some of the few who had stayed OTJ for reasons the younger guys could not understand.  As their laughter subsided they began to speak about the unprecedented divide between the NYPD and the Mayor, the self-avowed “reformist”, Bill de Blasio.  The disillusionment and distrust of de Blasio among the members of the NYPD had escalated to what felt to be a point of no return.  When PBA President Patrick Lynch began to distribute cards to be filled out by all Members of Service (MOS) to formally uninvite the Mayor and some members of the City Council from attending their funerals, it was an audacious move but certainly not an abstract one for the MOS.  Every time a Cop begins his or her shift on Patrol; in the projects, subways and on the streets, there is no guarantee they will see their families again.  Life on patrol for a Cop is beyond hazardous and always has the possibility of life and death hanging in the balance.  There is no such thing as a “routine” call.

*****     *****

It was the Summer of 1984 and they were part time partners.  They slowly rode up and down the narrow tenement lined streets just south of Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.  It seems as if each stoop on these blocks had more people hanging about than the next.  The non-stop, static from the radio transmitted calls without much distinction between urgency and banality.  The crack cocaine trade was in full throttle and the dealers had grown sophisticated enough to have look-outs on the rooftops with walkie-talkies in hand to alert the dealers in their fortified apartments of the location of “Five-Oh”, the “PO-PO”, the “Polices”. 

Calls that required them to get out of their RMP immediately put them at risk as people in the buildings would rain down everything from soiled Pampers to household trash.  Sometimes they and their RMP were hit by rocks or other thrown items.  It was a hostile environment and one in which the local drug dealers would always reign with the upper hand.  Working in an environment such as this can change a man; it can harden his heart, occlude his innate sensibilities, and have him rendered to the point he acts on pure adrenaline-fueled experience and instinct.  It is beyond frustrating; the upside down nature of working such a sector can make the Job feel like a Darwinian enterprise where only the strongest survive.  And, make no mistake about it, it was a Darwinian environment, one in which the NYPD was not fully in control of.  Given that state of affairs, the reality in those neighborhoods and on those streets, the Cops had to assert greater authority and sometimes such displays of authority amounted to nothing more than sealing off a block with RMP’s and having the Cops walk towards each other from opposite sides of the block asking for ID’s, conducting some impromptu Q and A, with the occasional crack in the head of some mope who mouthed off or was otherwise “non-compliant”.  By the time they got back to their RMP they needed showers from all the baby shit and garbage that had been hurled down on them.

*****     *****

On this Sunday afternoon those days seemed a lifetime ago.  They both carried scars, physical and emotional from those days, but they were still in the mix.  Neither of them ever had the mindset of “20 and Out” and, to many of their peers that seemed almost akin to insanity.  After all, who would stay in this Job any longer than they had to?  Perhaps more than some realized.  They’d both earned their Gold Shields in the early 1990’s, been assigned to different Detective Units, gone back to school at John Jay on NYPD’s dime, and felt they had more to offer not to the Job per se, but to the youngsters coming up.

They had both filled out and handed in their Detective’s Endowment Association cards with the same language to the Mayor and City Council as those produced by Patrick Lynch, President of the  PBA.  They were both equally disgusted and disturbed by the turn of events that had the NYPD so horribly estranged from the populace and City Hall.  They each recognized that this was not an open wound that would heal anytime soon.  And, to them, that was a shame.  But they would not be persuaded to “pull the pin”, they would not file their retirement papers until they felt weariness in their bones and minds.  They each had a few good years remaining OTJ.

By the time they walked out onto St. Nicholas Avenue the Giants had won, the night had come calling and a brisk wind from the north made it feel colder than it was.  They walked to the subway station on 168^th Street and descended the stairs to the warmth of the cavernous station platform.  He would take an A, C or E Train south to his neighborhood on the lower Westside while his buddy would change trains at 59^th Street for an F Train to Queens.  Some of the people on the platform looked at them oddly, these two men of the same age and similar heights and weights.  They smelled of Cop; every mope on the street could tell a Cop from a mile away.  The only reason the folks on the platform gave them a second look was because one of them was White, the other Black.  Yes, Black and White, lifelong friends and fellow Cops; two men bound by an Oath and a shared belief. 

They lived their professional lives wading through shit storms of every variety; encountered every type of person at their absolute worst.  They each separately felt the instinctual pangs when they rolled on a “domestic” and found an innocent, quivering child huddled beneath a bed bearing the telltale signs of prior physical abuse. Such experiences do not harden a man’s heart, they open it. 

As the subway swayed and squealed its way to a stop at the 59th Street station they shook hands, slapped backs and said see you later.  Each went on the train ride home alone, one Black Cop, one White Cop, back into the anonymity of a late night subway ride.  As always they’d made tentative plans to meet up to watch a playoff game, probably in a bar in Jamaica, Queens in a predominately Black neighborhood.  They parted with that thought in mind while simultaneously saying a quiet prayer for each other.  As Cops no tomorrow was promised, no plans guaranteed. The City could rage in anger and frustration around them but they would not abandon it for Westchester or Rockland County.  No.  This was their City and as long as they served they would conduct themselves largely as they always had just a bit more seasoned, somewhat wiser, and more confident in their tasks and ability to see around corners.  There were likely many ways to earn a comparable salary but neither of them would even consider it now; not yet.  They still had a taste for The Job and would not shy away from whatever dish was being served.

INTERESTING HISTORICAL LINKS:

http://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-city-used-to-be-a-terrifying-place-photos-2013-7

http://theboweryboys.blogspot.com/2014/10/1981-was-indeed-most-violent-year-in.html

http://www.fastcocreate.com/3025540/travel-back-to-1981-new-york-with-these-photos-of-a-gritty-graffiti-covered-subway#3

http://nypost.com/2010/05/16/why-the-bronx-burned/

http://poormagazine.org/node/3967

 Copyright The Brooding Cynyx 2014 © All Rights Reserved

THE “TORTURE REPORT”: A SLAP IN THE FACE TO THE CIA AND SPECIAL FORCES

FEINSTEIN AND COHORTS NEGLIGENTLY

 RELEASE INFORMATION

THAT COULD JEOPARDIZE AMERICAN LIVES

SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE FOR INTELLIGENCE CHAIRMAN

DIANNE FEINSTEIN PROVES TO BE UNSUITABLE TO REMAIN

IN THE SENATE AFTER WHAT SOME SAY IS AN ACT

OF TREASON

TAGS: SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE REPORT ON TORTURE, SENATOR DIANE FEINSTEIN

GROSS NEGLIGENCE PUTS AMERICAN LIVES AT RISK, THE WAR ON TERROR, THE “TORTURE”

REPORT IN CONTEXT, SEPTEMBER 11, 2001-A WAR NOT OF OUR CHOOSING,

CIA, SPECIAL FORCES, BLACK SITES, ENEMY COMBATANTS, NATIONAL SECURITY,

NO REASON TO RELEASE THIS INFO AT THIS TIME, A $50 MILLION DEMOCRATIC WITCH HUNT

(Wednesday December 10, 2014, NY, NY)  In a city that never seems to cease shocking and dismaying us, yesterday in Washington, DC was among the days that will long be considered a low point for the Senate.  For no apparent reason aside from bitter partisanship, in one of the last acts the Democratic controlled Senate can make before the new Republican dominated Senate is sworn in next January, the Chairman of the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence, the poorly aging California Senator Dianne Feinstein, with great hype, released information that should never have been revealed at this time.  The blatant move to tarnish the efforts of the CIA and our military and the use of “black sites” for imprisonment and interrogation in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2009 is a direct affront to the committed men and women who were tasked with waging a new kind of war against a new kind of enemy after September 11, 2001.  While the focus of this “report” was concentrated on CIA and military contractors operating with “enemy combatants” from 2002 through 2004, the document contains information that reveal it to be nothing more than a half-assed attempt at a witch hunt. Senator Feinstein once again demonstrated her inability to put politics aside from national security. 

It appears the passage of time has dulled the sharp images and memories of the death and destruction in New York City, Washington, DC, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania on that sunny Tuesday morning 13 years ago.  It was on that day that the Taliban protected Muslim extremist terrorist organization known as al Qaeda pulled the United States into a war that would see them ultimately routed by mid December 2001.  Within weeks of September 11, 2001 the CIA and Special Forces had been inserted into Afghanistan in advance of what we would see as the successful aerial assault that it was,  followed by a near extinction of al Qaeda fighters.  Those who remained were trapped in the Khyber Pass.  Many “enemy combatants” were captured and the CIA began to set up “black sites” in countries supportive of our fight against terrorists with a global reach.  It was at some of these black sites that the enemy combatants were held and interrogated.  Remember, from September 11, 2001 until December 31, 2001 we had seen ricin laced letters sent to public officials and news reporters; the belief that another “follow-up” attack was imminent.  The Congress quickly granted the President and military broad authority to conduct this new type of asymmetrical warfare in the firm belief that the United States, New York City in particular, remained a “high value target rich” environment. The basics of what came to be known as “The Patriot Act” were passed with bipartisan support.  This was not a war of our choosing; this was a most urgent matter of engaging in a rapid and overwhelming display of American might while the fires from the collapsed World Trade Center towers still smoldered entombing dozens of unrecovered bodies including the remains of several hundred fallen members of the FDNY.

SECRETS KEPT

Our federal government has a long history of nondisclosure even for the most petty of information.  Some of the secrets our government has kept from us are the details of actions ranging from criminal to inhumane.  One needs look no further than the infamous “Tuskegee Experiment” where government doctors infected African American men in Tuskegee Alabama with syphilis and observed the advance of their disease for decades without ever calling the “experiment” off to do the moral and medically ethical thing they should have done.  There were trials using LSD on servicemen in the 1960’s as well as a host of human experiments to assess the biological effects of radiation from nuclear material, inserting non-toxic gas into the New York City Subway system to study the flow of air within the network of tunnels and a variety of an unknown number of studies all conducted under the guise of “national security”.  Even the bogus claims of alien bodies from an alleged 1947 UFO crash being stored at an Air Force Base near Roswell, New Mexico was kept under wraps for decades as was the voluminous amount of data and information accumulated throughout the years concerning the existence of UFO’s. Yes, our federal government was extremely tight-lipped about matters large and small, of extreme sensitivity and small consequence. With the advent of the “Sunshine Laws” and the “Freedom of Information Act” (FIFA) researchers, journalists and scholars have gained access to a wealth of information, a literal treasure trove of federal secrets, embarrassments, and even crimes.

The list of governmental secrets, deceptions and outright lies is long and sordid but, some secrets were kept for a period of decades for reasons of discretion and decorum, in some circumstances, before being released.  Some of the revelations kept hidden from the public for long periods of time, once revealed seemed laughably  inane while others portrayed in chilling detail clandestine operations both here and abroad.  Secrecy has its place as do security clearances and other measures constructed to protect United States interests abroad.  

SECRETS REVEALED

Given what the feds have kept from the public over the years, the release yesterday of the 600 page summary of the Senate Select Committee’s investigation into the alleged use of enhanced interrogation techniques in the immediate aftermath of the al Qaeda attack on the United States on September 11, 2001 is inexplicable.  Consuming $50 million and five years of Senate staffers’ time and efforts, the actual report is close to 6,000 pages and contains information that could cost the lives of our men and women in the military still on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq.  If nothing else the particulars spelled out in this summary will likely be used as “recruiting” material by ISIL and the other terrorist groups still hell-bent on attacking us here at home and at our foreign embassies, consulates and other locations of vital interest. 

Long touted as “The Torture Report” the critics of the document, many of whom were intimately involved in the CIA programs and operated the black sites, cite its many flaws and inaccuracies as well as the tone and tenor of the report that at times is merely accusatory, at other times incriminating.  That our own Senate would publically air for all the world to see some of our most closely held information regarding intelligence gathering and analysis and tradecraft, has the distinct feel of a negligent act at best; a matter of criminality, gross irresponsibility, with a slight tincture of treason.

It is the nature of this report that makes its public release all the more reckless, irresponsible and indefensible.  We are currently still engaged militarily in Afghanistan, Iraq and other less known places around the world as our efforts to eradicate as many terrorist groups and their infrastructure such as it is, as we possibly can.  The interrogation of the enemy combatants, many of whom are still held at the Naval Base – Guantanamo, Cuba, - had, at the time, the greatest sense of urgency.  The efficacy and value of information gleamed through the use of “enhanced” techniques can be hotly debated.  There are those who say that a prisoner being tortured will say anything to appease his captors and others who attest that the various “enhanced” techniques did in fact yield “actionable intelligence”; information that had “real time value”. 

NO HIGH GROUND

The hypocrisy surrounding the Senate “investigation”, the compilation and release of this flawed report is astounding.  Actually, the most grievous error made by Feinstein’s Committee was the charade perpetrated yesterday on the floor of the Senate and in front of the press in the Capitol Rotunda.  To hear the self-righteous Democrats standing up for the “honor” of our country was sickening.  They speak of a virtue they lack when they call upon honor.  The men and women of the CIA and Special Forces live by a code that includes “Duty, Honor, Country” and, for those brave souls, those are life and death traits. For a career politician like Feinstein to publically excoriate the personal character and motives of those she is unfit to even tie their shoes, was a sad hour indeed. 

The United States has written some of the language contained in the Geneva Conventions regarding the conduct of a military during war time. We are also Party to many other international pacts and treaties that address wartime matters of conduct and protocol.  They specifically address the treatment to be afforded prisoners of war but those who were swept up on the high plains of Rawalpindi and the foothills of the Hindu Kush were not part of any Nation/ State’s uniformed organized armed forces; they were al Qaeda fighters, terrorists being protected by the harsh, brutal extremist regime of The Taliban.  That these prisoners were to be afforded all the rights of prisoners of war was a rigorous debate at the Pentagon, Department of Justice, the Office of White House Counsel, the Attorney General, as well as in the Office of the President and Vice President and the National Security Council.  As a rule and historic precedent we do not engage in torture.

The CIA and Special Forces as well as the military contractors functioned under the secure belief that their actions were sanctioned by those at the highest level of the Administration and were legally sound methods and techniques.  Now there are people on both sides of the issue blaming the other for what was and was not lawful.  If Americans had been polled regularly in the weeks and months after 9-11-2001 about the use of “torture” to extract information from enemy combatants in our custody overseas, most would have agreed that it was prudent to do so.  Everything about this investigation and report must be kept in context not just chronologically but also within the public sentiments and the reality of further attacks after al Qaeda  struck from the clear blue skies unprovoked on September 11, 2001.    

THE SELLING OF THE AMERICAN SOUL

For all those who vigorously protest the alleged and actual treatment of some in our custody received in the early days of our “War on Terror”, there have been transgressions that were such dramatic divergence from our historical behavior that it is difficult to equate those actions with what was done in the aftermath of 9-11-2001.  Afghanistan was a righteous and just cause as we have mentioned earlier.  Once the Cheney/Bush Administration shifted their focus far afield towards a confrontation with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, we lost the moral high ground, such as it had been.  Never before in our history had we waged a war of aggression, a war of choice.  But, for reasons to this day not fully understood, yet fair to say were somewhat dubious at best, absolutely greedy, belligerent and petulant at worst, all military assets were shunted away from the real battlefield in Afghanistan.  It has been well documented that had the Administration provided authorization as requested from the commanders in the field to seal off the rugged, lawless border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, we very well might have had Osama bin Laden captured or killed prior to New Year’s Day of 2002.  It was in this ill-conceived, poorly planned, and utterly unnecessary war in Iraq that the American soul was most soiled and tarnished in the eyes of the world and in the conscience of Americans at large.

But the American soul was born out of armed revolution, forged in the brutality of our own Civil War and has repeatedly, steadfastly stood up and sided with those seeking to obtain our democratic ideals.  We live in a “Democratic Republic”; sometimes the designations assumed by our political Parties occlude our true identity. We have fought against Fascism, Nazism, Totalitarianism, and the inhumane ideologies of ethnic and sectarian genocide, oppression, religious sectarianism, and for the basic human rights endowed by our Creator.  Generally speaking we are a fine and decent people and have used our vast military and diplomatic might and influence judiciously and with great restraint on the international stage.   

FROM A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE

Time, as in hindsight, provides a different perspective on events from the past.  It often takes the distance of years to fully objectively assess what was and what wasn’t done, the entirety of the decision making process, and how events evolved based on the circumstances of the day.  Lost in this retrospective process is the immediacy of the moments now under scrutiny.  History is written well after the fact by historians just as the analysts and critics have the luxury of time; for those who were not present in the arena, far away from the theater of battle with all its confusion and hot blood spilling, it is easy to deconstruct the past.  It is only natural.  But what should be first and foremost in the minds of all involved today is the simple fact that what was done was done with the balance of the greater good in mind.  Yes, the Cheney/Bush Administration are guilty of a number of sins but those sins came later in the game.  In the months and years, from the end of 2001 until 2004 they authorized actions that appear suspect today but back then seemed to serve the public interest and national security.

The arguments of today will turn into thesis topics of tomorrow and will long be studied in our military academies and our intelligence community.  Hopefully they have learned lessons but all bets are off when an event of the magnitude of 9-11-2001 tears at the very heart of who we are as a nation and as a people.  We sought, as always, to engage from the high ground but soon realized that perch did not exist in the war on terror, in the fight against zealots so committed to a cause they would much rather die than capitulate.  Men unafraid of death are adversaries of a vastly different nature than we are accustomed to.  We fight to defend our nation and people; they attack to promote an ideology that has no life beyond the remote corners of the planet they are permitted to live and plot, plan, and ready themselves for an unwinnable war.

http://nypost.com/2014/12/10/tortured-logic-the-enemy/

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2014/1210/CIA-torture-report-In-Iraq-US-abuses-and-their-consequences-are-old-news

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/us/politics/obama-says-senate-report-vindicates-his-ending-of-cia-program.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/harsh-interrogation-techniques-detailed-in-report/2014/12/09/dd3173c4-7fd0-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html?hpid=z1

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/9/torture-report-reveals-cia-deception-extreme-inter/

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