Via Radley Balko, this:
Answering a question about his approach to combatting crime, John McCain suggested that military strategies currently employed by US troops in Iraq could be applied to high crime neighborhoods here in the US. McCain called them tactics “somewhat like we use in the military…You go into neighborhoods, you clamp down, you provide a secure environment for the people that live there, and you make sure that the known criminals are kept under control.”
Now look. I understand that it was a common rhetorical strategy of your garden variety right-wing blogger to state, when discussing the difficulties n Iraq, that Baghdad was no worse than Detroit, or that Baghdad was safer than Philadelphia.
But those people are idiots.
And I certainly never expected a Presidential candidate to suggest militarizing American cities. IK wonder if this idiocy will gain any traction with the press. Maybe if we say that mcCain dealt the stupid card, and he dealt it from the bottom of the deck.
jake
I still can’t read that quote without experiencing rage induced brain freeze.
This is how much of a dumbfuck this man is. To distinguish himself from GeorgeHehBushBot McCain will add another layer of shit to the Constitution AND bust our police forces just like Dubya fucked up the military.
And do I need to point out the demographics of your average high-crime neighborhood?
Never mind, that would probably be playing the race card.
jonst
John,
I like and respect you. Look forward, every day, to your writings. Find comfort, wisdom, and humor in them. But when you write “And I certainly never expected a Presidential candidate to suggest militarizing American cities” I want to shout ‘why the hell not? Given events of the past 7 years’. This is how far the rot is spreading John. Go back and rethink everything perhaps?
blueintheface
I think it’s a great idea. We can bust through people’s doors in the middle of the night, drag out anyone we think might know someone in a gang and torture them until they tell us what we want to know. And we can pay Halliburton billions of dollars to run detention centers and give Blackwater a huge chunk of cash to do security. They did a great job in New Orleans.
Some people will probably scream about civil rights and the presumption of innocence, but those people are just gang-loving Liberals who want to see this country destroyed anyway.
Bill H
Including walling off neighborhoods? Checking id’s at militarized checkpoints? Machine gunning any car that won’t stop? Kicking down doors without warrants at midnight and searching for weapons?
jake
Just under control and not in jail? John McCain is soft on crime! Unless “kept under control” means each neighborhood will have it’s own Abu Gharib.
But that doesn’t matter on Planet Str8Talk. McCain wants you to know that if he’s president he’ll keep people in their place.
lutton
Ironically, this HAS been suggested in Philadelphia, by our own mayor and police commissioner (formerly of DC, BTW), due to a huge spike in gun violence last year.
The nucleus of the plan is known as ‘stop and frisk’ where anyone on the street could be searched by police at any time for any reason. (Yes, it’s obviously a civil rights violation.) I doubt that charges would stick if challanged, especially for crimes not related to weapons (you put your weed in there), but I guess the idea was to get the guns off the street and let the legalities work out later. So the perp might eventually walk, but they’re still not getting their illegal handgun back.
Tim Fuller
It’s already happening.
Even the Mayor isn’t safe anymore. And they killed his dogs.
Enjoy.
Conservatively Liberal
The solution to every problem the right encounters is “war” of one kind or another. They love war, they revel in war, war makes them look tough and decisive. War is a winner for them.
The problem is that everyone else loses. But the right likes that result too. They win, and you lose.
ploeg
McCain has heard about how well bombing worked in Philadelphia.
jake
Done.
tomboy
It’s nixon’s southern strategy all over again.
Law and order for the racists in the cities.
These people are incredible.
AkaDad
To be fair, it really does take a maverick to support martial law.
ploeg
If the Village People had a slot for a Navy pilot, McCain would probably audition for that slot.
Macho, macho maaaan! I’ve got to be a macho man!
The only possible problem would be with McCain’s singing.
Keith
So basically John McCain’s vocabulary these days consists of a noun, a verb, and “The Surge” (and an awkward thumbs-up/smile combination to replace Giuliani’s creepy widening-eyes mannerism)
ploeg
How ’bout if we say that McCain dealt the stupid card, but unfortunately he’s a few cards short of a full deck?
The Other Steve
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
This same mentality came back from Vietnam. The idea that you could fly in, blow some shit up and then leave is what brought us SWAT. It brought us the police tactics of the 70’s and 80’s where police go in blow some shit up, and then leave with their suspect in hand.
and everybody sits there going “What the fuck happened, and is anybody going to fix my windows and doors?”
The 1990s strategy was different, under Clinton’s COPS initiative we put more cops on the street, but we put them in contact with the people. Made them trusted representatives… a part of the community. When people no longer feared the cops, they no longer feared the criminals and they worked together to put an end to a lot of the random violence.
And now we’re going to swing back. Take the lessons of Iraq and apply them to Detroit?
Can I just point out that murder rates WERE ON THE DECLINE until a few years ago. ON THE DECLINE!
WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED!?
Jon H
Radley’s site also has a photo of a Los Angeles medical marijuana bust where one of the people with the cops is wearing a Blackwater shirt.
The LA Times, which posted the photo, later took it down.
Jon H
Link to the Agitator post I mention above.
Chris M
I hadn’t realized that McCain is a total fucking imbecile.
It all makes sense now.
slaney black
Alright, is there any f’ing doubt now that the Republican party isn’t just openly fascist these days?
ThymeZone
Well, we can start with McCain’s home state as an example of how this approach is already being applied.
Incertus
I figured I was seeing parallels because I’m reading Perlstein’s book right now. Glad to see that I’m not alone in thinking that McCain is running for four more years of Nixon instead of Bush.
carsick
Will the press even care to follow up on the suggestion of martial law? Doubtful. Obama wipes his nose and they describe the kleenex as an embroidered handkerchief.
We’ve already become so inured to this stuff that a kid who falls off a bridge and breaks his back and then is tasered 19 times doesn’t even raise a ruckus.
HRA
Is there no one left in the MSM to confront McCain on this idiocy? Maybe it’s time for a real magazine cover of McCain feeding the Constitution into a shredder while he grins. I can only hope.
sleepy
“And I certainly never expected a Presidential candidate to suggest militarizing American cities.”
spent much time in west oakland recently? that shit already happened.
slippy "snake plissken" toad
John McCain: taking the dystopian fantasies of the B movies one step too far.
bago
When a cop hears “cover me”, they point their weapon in a general direction.
When a marine hears “cover me” they unload an entire clip while the flanker is in motion.
If we could just bring the death count in Minneapolis down to the levels of Basra, we’re winning, right?
jrg
Why stop at “known criminals”? What about gays and harlots? Besides, there are Muslims in the inner city. Social conservatism could work if we put some guns behind it.
Only liberals would think that martial law and secret prisons are not awesome for Democracy. Of course, liberals would rather wait until the gays, harlots and Muslims rise up and destroy America.
The liberals supported legislation to stop building fast food restaurants in South Central LA – how is that any different than martial law or forcing someone to accept Christ our Savior?
A vote for a Democrat is a vote against the martial law and secret prisons that will keep us safe and free… And trust me, a few years in a secret work camp is much better than burning in hell for an eternity. Vote for the party that knows how to win wars and spread Democracy. Vote Republican, ’08!
neal peart
He dealt the fascist card from the bottom of the deck.
Notorious P.A.T.
All hail the great and wonderful Surge! ! ! We all love the mighty Surge, and the Great and Honorable Saint Petraeus who hath brought it unto us! All glory flows from the Surge! ! !
AnneLaurie
And he had the balls to suggest this in front of an Urban League audience, because the fReichtards believe even “those people” (minorities, working poor) have fallen in love with Blackwater, or at least are desperate enough not to reject his Detroit-is-the-next-Falujah fantasy.
protected static
I thought you were dead.
Nancy Irving
And he will pay for it by doing away with that silly bear DNA program. :)
mclaren
What I love about these kinds of wacked out ideas is that no one seems to turn it around and look at it from the opposite direction. Does anyone think that all the ex-gangbangers and liquor store holdup artists the Army has had to enlist in order to make their recruitment numbers will come back from Iraq and do nothing with all the knowledge of IEDs and urban guerilla tactics they gained from the insurgents?
How long will it be before something like this happens and then some activists who spent time in Iraq take out the entire local police station with IEDs? How long before gangbangers start asssassinating anti-drug SWAT teams with home-built sniper UAVs?
Iraq serves as quite a fertile petrie dish for insurgents to learn how to take out major pieces of hardware, like the M1A1 Abrams tank, with homebrew IEDs made from cellphones and cheap scavenged consumer electronics. How much less heavily armed is a police car than an M1A1 Abrams tank?
As John Cole keeps pointing out, police are completely out of control in this country, tasering and killing innocent people for no reason, and nobody does anything about it. Well, at a certain point, the ex-Iraq platoon sergeant of some kid in the barrio who just got tasered to death by thug cops for no reason may get pissed and start thinking about what he could do to send a message to the local police department. And when he thinks back on Iraq where he saw 15-year-old kids feed the entire U.S. army into a meatgrinder, where do you think his thoughts will turn?
Nobody seems to be connecting the dots here. When lawless out-of-control cops can shoto and kill and taser with impunity, how long will it be before they lose their legitimacy entirely and citizens start acting like insurgents? Martin van Creveld and William S. Lind have been talking for years about how the hallmark of our era is the decline of the legitimacy of the nation-state, and as more and more thuggish cops and TSA goons and anti-marijuana SWAT teams handcuff and taser terminal cancer patients, the perceived legitimacy of our own government dwindles to zero.
We should be aware of what happens when the perceived legitimacy of a government drops to nothing. We celebrate it every fourth of july.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Nixonland redux.
Go back and read the section about what happened in Newark, NJ after the riots (pp 191-194).
This is just a small taste of the cards non-whites have been dealt “from the bottom of the deck” for centuries.
McCain’s new campaign slogan should be: if you vote for the black guy, you’re all n****rs to me!
Brachiator
How can this man still be seen as anything other than a joke? How can we possibly still have so-called journalists falling all over themselves to defend, explain and even edit and re-write McCain’s inanities to make him appear reasonable and “experienced?”
And I love how McCain, like so many Republicans and conservatives, are always certain that “known criminals” can be easily identified, thus eliminating any need for laws concerning civil liberties.
In this case, I only have to recall what life in L.A. was like after the last riots here.
Some people had the nerve to call in to talk radio shows and talk about how safe the city was. But the cost was a curfew that was more harshly imposed on nonwhites in what was essentially a Blacks and Latinos Containment program which imposed constraints on freedom of movement without regard to whether a person was an ordinary citizen trying to go about his or her life or a supposed “known criminal.”