Beware the War Propheteers

Playing the Christian "Bass" with the skill of Cream-era Jack Bruce: Like his notorious predecessor in Arkansas, Mike Huckabee is a high-viscosity politician advised by Dick Morris. Like too many other Republicans, he's a Christian "pro-lifer" not unduly burdened by the death of thousands of children in needless foreign wars.

One is a former Southern Baptist Pastor, the other a one-time Mormon Bishop. One established a niche as a hard-line social conservative who is surprisingly “progressive” on welfare state issues; the other began his political career trying to out-flank Ted Kennedy to the left on abortion and gay rights, only to re-tool himself into the very model of a modern moral majoritarian.

There's a polygamy joke in here somewhere: A low-res photo of Mitt Romney with Reich-wing succubus Ann Coulter.

They are separated by a vast political gulf and have followed very different political vectors, but GOP presidential aspirants Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney are now the chief contenders for the support of the Christian Right. The only authentic conservative in the race, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, disqualified himself in the Christian Right's eyes by taking the teachings of the Prince of Peace too literally, and applying the Golden Rule to foreign policy. The Mullahs of the Mega-Churches, and many of their followers, are mortally offended by the notion that decades of bellicose interventionism by Washington might have something to do with the antagonisms that breed and feed anti-American terrorism.

Romney has already received an unction from some prominent Evangelicals, largely on the strength of his unqualified commitment to continue (and most likely to escalate) Bush the Lesser's war against the Islamic world. But as Romney faces the prospect of being eclipsed by the more orthodox Huckabee, he has made a pilgrimage to holy ground – the George H.W. Bush presidential library – to offer a speech on “Faith in America.” Romney's purpose is to assuage concerns that a follower of Joseph Smith would be an unsuitable vessel for the political purposes of the Christian Right.This isn't quite like Henry IV standing bare-headed in the snow outside Canossa, but Romney's gesture displays an element of plaintive desperation nonetheless.

On this day (December 5) when Romney's theological convictions and religious affiliation take center stage, we would do well to consider some of Huckabee's baggage – specifically, his attachment to the Rev. John Hagee, Pastor of San Antonio's Cornerstone Church, Founder and Director of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), and the most impassioned advocate of open-ended war with the Israeli government's enemies, beginning with Iran.

Hagee almost seems to be a genetically engineered caricature of the televangelist culture. As orotund as he is rotund, Hagee looks like a late middle-aged version of JB's Big Boy and behaves a bit like Elmer Gantry. Both his physique and lifestyle testify that Hagee is a stranger in the house of self-restraint. And this is quite odd, given the fact that he ardently believes in the Rapture, during which believers would be taken away to heaven, leaving behind all material encumberances, including the clothes they would be wearing at the time.

As C.S. Lewis noted, wealth knits a man to this world. Despite repeatedly admonishing his flock to prepare for the fast-approaching Rapture, Hagee remains thoroughly enmeshed with the world. He may well be the wealthiest of the war-obsessed clergymen we could call War Propheteers.

Stephen Strang is the human vinculum between Huckabee and Hagee. Strang, a long-time friend and business associate of Hagee, presides over a Pentecostal publishing empire; among Strang's imprints is Front Line books, which has published several of Hagee's books, including his latest, In Defense of Israel.

Late last Summer, a cover story in Strang's New Man magazine anointed Huckabee as the heir apparent to George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. In recent weeks, Huckabee has tapped Strang to serve on his “Faith and Values Coalition,” which is intended to attract money from, and consolidate support within, the Christian Right. Strang served a similar role in the early days of Bush the Lesser's first presidential campaign.

Strang is also a regional director of Hagee's Christians United for Israel, a pressure group that describes itself – without a detectable hint of irony – as a “Christian AIPAC,” as if one such organization weren't a sufficient burden and blight upon our land. Each year CUFI holds a "Night to Honor Israel" in dozens of cities nation-wide, events often organized in cooperation with the Israeli government. And each summer since its founding CUFI has dispatched thousands of its members to Washington to lobby Congress on behalf of a foreign power that is hardly without its own influence in the Imperial Capital.

Whatever one thinks of AIPAC and its works (which include espionage), the attachment of American Jews to the nation-state of Israel is organic and understandable. Hagee's devotion is largely abstract and theological, and colored with more than a hint of opportunism.

The Reverend is more or less a standard-issue radical dispensationalist of a familiar variety, but distinguishes himself by the near-monomania he displays in promoting the interests of Israel – at least as he and some Israeli factions perceive them. And there is a certain duplicity at work here, since the eschatology embraced by Hagee dictates that Jews have an obligation to gather into Israel as a prelude to an apocalyptic war in which most of them will be slaughtered.

By this time, as Hagee foresees it, he and his brethren will have been evacuated from the earth via the Rapture, and thus be able to observe the bloodbath from the safety of a celestial skybox.

Although he stoutly denies it, Hagee's convictions dictate that he do what he can to foment war, rather than promote peace. For several years he has been urging that the US wage a war of aggression against Iran for the purpose of preempting its nuclear program.

Rev. Hagee makes the case for endless bloodshed to Texas Senators John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, whose voting records suggest they were a receptive audience.

Hagee would doubtless insist that the recently published National Intelligence Estimate, which concludes that Iran froze its nuclear program in 2003 (the year Tehran offered to re-open diplomatic relations with Washington), was ghost-written by Satan. Other key voices of the War Lobby, such as Norman Podhoretz and Rush Limbaugh, are content to posit a wide-ranging conspiracy of “wreckers” in the CIA who produced the NIE, thereby undermining the drive for war. Only Hagee has the courage and insight to stalk the truth to its demonic lair: This is nothing less than a vast conspiracy led by the Devil himself.

For indeed, is it not written that the heathen will rage, the people imagine a vain thing, and the kings rulers of the world will take counsel together against the Lord and His anointed? Most Christians understand that passage from the second Psalm to be a prophecy of the advent of Jesus of Nazareth, whom we worship as the Christ, or messiah. Rev. Hagee, however, has repeatedly and passionately insisted that Jesus is not, and never claimed to be, the messiah.

Hagee visits General Ariel Sharon during one of his many trips to Israel.

There is “not one verse of Scripture in the New Testament that says Jesus came to be the Messiah,” writes Hagee in his new book In Defense of Israel (page 136), reporting a discovery unique in Christian history. Even “after his resurrection,” Hagee continues, Jesus made “repeated denials” that he was or would be the Messiah (page141).

All of this would be quite startling to the countless thousands of Christian believers -- including those who embraced the Gospel in the early first century -- who could have spared themselves the pains of martyrdom if they had been willing to disavow the Messianic status of Jesus of Nazareth.

After elaborating on this notion at length, Hagee makes passing reference to the fact that he and a long-time friend, Orthodox Rabbi Aryeh Schienberg, “agree to disagree” regarding “the nature and identity of the Messiah” (page 171), and that “when we stand in the streets of Jerusalem and see the Messiah walking toward us, one of us will have a major theological adjustment to make!”

Similar disingenuous comments are sprinkled through Hagee's book, intended to inspire a knowing chuckle from Christians and reassure Jews. But I think Hagee himself would also have to make a radical theological adjustment under the circumstances he describes, since he is careful only to insinuate that Jesus is the Messiah, and refuses to announce that conclusion clearly and unambiguously.


Arab Christians celebrate the birth of their Messiah at the Church of the Nativity in Gaza: From Hagee's perspective, these folks must not be considered "true" Christians.


It's also significant that a large section of In Defense of Israel consists of lambasting the Christian Church -- beginning with the New Testament itself -- for what he describes as history of relentless anti-Jewish persecution. Hagee describes the purported beliefs of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a collection of classic anti-Jewish notions, including the view that Jews "are essentially scheming to take over the world.... [and] are responsible for every negative situation in the world and that they are behind every international event or crisis, including the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany."


"If this sounds familiar, it is," he concludes. "It is no different than the teachings of the Christian church prior to the Holocaust." (Page 74.)


One of the reasons why Mitt Romney is unappetizing to many conservative Christians is the Mormon teaching that historic Christianity, prior to the advent of Joseph Smith, was hopelessly mired in apostasy. John Hagee teaches exactly the same thing, while placing the UN-created nation-state of Israel in a central position akin to that occupied by Joseph Smith in the Mormon view of history. This might help explain, among other things, why the Rev. Hagee has little if any sympathy for Arab Christians residing in the West Bank and Gaza.


How closely would Hagee be tied to Huckabee, were the latter to win the White House? During the reign of Bush the Lesser, Hagee has been on the presidential speed-dial. He has been among the most passionate defenders of the doctrine of the all-powerful president who can make war according to his sovereign whims. In an interview with the estimable Charles Goyette, Hagee declared: "We do not have a war declaration for Iraq, and neither does the president need one to expand it [the war] into Iran."


I suspect that if Mitt Romney is elected president, Hagee would have no difficulty reaching across the theological divide -- as long as Romney remains true to the gospel of militarist bloodshed. If Huckabee makes it to the Oval Office, it's likely that Hagee would be part of the Inner Court. Either prospect would be troubling to the Christian Right, were it more interested in defending Christian principles than in accumulating and preserving political power.


Dum spiro, pugno!

A Programming Note...

My good and dear friends:

With my wife in the hospital again and a full house of sick kids (or should that be called a "royal flush"?), I've been inundated with domestic chores. This explains my scandalously long hiatus, which will end tomorrow -- I promise.

Mientras tanto, and apropos of nothing, I've decided to share a few performance clips that have offered me some solace today, while cleaning and folding clothes and linens onto which my afflicted offspring have been casting their gorge. In such circumstances, I had to find something (of a non-psychotropic nature, I hasten to specify) to elevate my mood.

The first offering is from the Trey Anastasio Band, captured in the middle of a pointless but delicious ten-minute jam:





The next helping is from the immortal Jeff Beck at this year's Crossroads Festival in Chicago. Here he is turning The Beatles' "A Day in the Life" inside-out. Of particular note is Mr. Beck's astonishingly gifted 21-year-old bass player, Tal Wakenfield. Her skills aren't displayed to best advantage on this track; the track that allows her some room to shine, "'Cause We've Ended as Lovers," can be seen here.





A seasonal note is struck by Brian Setzer's Orchestra in this Hep-Cat version of "Jingle Bells." Honestly, playing in the Setzer Orchestra must be the coolest gig imaginable.





Hitting cleanup is the heroic Jimmy Vaughan, an authentic American Blues virtuoso and genuine patriot, singing "Down With Big Brother." Too often introduced as the brother of the late Stevie Ray, Jimmy V. is a titan in his own right who should be referred to as "Stevie Ray's guitar teacher."




Remember: De gustabis, non disputandum est...

... and I'll be back to regular blogging tomorrow.

Dum spiro, pugno!

Wasn't The Suspense Terrific? (Updated, 12/3)

Brown-shirted Utah Highway Patrol Officers stand in solidarity with Officer Jon Gardner during a November 30 press conference announcing that an internal inquiry found that his use of a Taser on motorist Jared Massey was "lawful."

The suspense was hardly unbearable when the Utah Highway Patrol (UHP) announced that it would “review” the criminal assault committed by Trooper Jon Gardner last September 14, when he attacked Jared Massey – an agitated motorist whose behavior was non-threatening – with a Taser.

A “review” of this kind is almost always an exercise in ratifying the illegal use of force by a police officer. The UHP performed as expected, announcing at a press conference yesterday (November 30) that Gardner's attack was “lawful and justified under the circumstances” -- despite the fact that the department's policy does not authorize the use of a Taser against someone who does not pose a threat.

The now-notorious video of the incident demonstrates beyond dispute that Massey posed no actual or potential threat to Gardner. The video record also shows that it was Gardner who needlessly escalated the encounter by ordering the driver from the vehicle, rather than handing him the unsigned ticket and scurrying off to wherever it is that malodorous revenue farmers like himself go after committing their acts of highway robbery.

Massey, who had admitted to driving 68 miles per hour in what he thought was a 65 mph zone, believed that Gardner was inviting him out of the car to show him a sign announcing the beginning of a 40 mph construction zone. Gardner apparently ordered Massey from the car for the purpose of arresting him for refusing to sign the citation, which isn't a crime since in Utah a signature is unnecessary.

(Here's something else to consider. Go back and look at the opening seconds of that video; notice how Officer Gardner pulled to the side of the road directly in front of the 40 MPH sign just before Massey passed him. It's clear to me that by doing so Gardner most likely obstructed Massey's view of the sign. At the very least, he would have distracted the driver, whose logical reaction would have been to pay attention to the UHP patrol car rather than the speed limit sign. I'm cynical enough to suspect that this is one of the oh-so-clever tricks patrolmen sometimes pull in order to pull in revenue.)

No citizen has the legal, let alone moral, obligation to submit to an unwarranted arrest. And no police officer has the legal, let alone moral, authority to use a Taser to punish a citizen for displaying a bad attitude. The Taser is supposedly a non-lethal weapon; it can – and has – served that role by immobilizing violent suspects without killing them or putting bystanders at risk. However, a better description of that device as typically used would be: “Frequently lethal instrument of torture” -- at least as it's being employed by police departments that routinely ignore guidelines supposedly intended to prevent it from being used as a means of “pain compliance.”

The only reason Gardner's attack came under review (however perfunctory) by the UHP was the global furor that erupted when Massey posted the video on YouTube. Now Gardner is in hiding, cringing and terrified by random acts of blogosphere bluster and the occasional threatening telephone call. To his considerable credit, Massey has condemned the threats and urged people to leave Gardner alone.

In this we see a useful contrast between Massey, who displays the character of a principled adult man, and the swaggering tax-supported adolescent bully who attacked him and now cowers behind the Big Brown Wall thrown up by his fellow brown-shirts of the UHP.

Does Gardner fear for his life? I certainly hope so, even as I pray that those fears prove to be unwarranted. The least we can hope for is that bullies occasionally know the visceral fear of the hunted.

In urging the public to lay off Gardner, Jared Massey points out that the State Trooper has a family. So does Massey, of course – a small child and a pregnant wife, both of whom saw him brutally attacked and needlessly humiliated. The pregnant wife was also threatened with arrest for the supposed crime of coming to Massey's aid.

At this point in our nation's descent into unalloyed tyranny, those responsible for inflicting needless violence on the citizenry need to be intimidated. They need to suffer the sting of disrepute, the cold loneliness of ostracism, the gut-churning and sleep-dispelling unease that comes from wondering if there will be retaliation for their acts of officially sanctioned violence. This is particularly true in cases of this kind in which the government isn't willing to punish such conduct.

In a qualified defense of Officer Gardner, the Provo Daily Herald – which has taken a seriously statist turn since I wrote for it a decade and a half ago – made an ironically useful point when it criticized Massey for being “argumentative ... and rather dense about some obvious social mores.”

“Here's a tip: when a uniformed man with a badge and a gun tells you to do something, shut up and do exactly what he says,” opined the Herald, a newspaper that serves the reddest community in Red-State America, and expressing the defining sentiment of what Lew Rockwell calls “Red-State Fascism.”

The Herald editorial collective elaborated:

“On the video, we don't see him [Massey] threatening the officer or getting out of control. But still, the officer has a badge and a gun -- and also a rule book. You can cooperate with the cops and save yourself a lot of trouble, or you can make them go by the book, as Massey apparently did without introspection. We have sympathy for law officers making traffic stops. They can turn deadly fast. Cops should not be hampered by excessive rules or second-guessing. They need the freedom to respond to each unique situation, within reason.”

The problem here, as noted above, is that Massey didn't force Gardner to “go by the book”; the “book” in this case dictated that Gardner simply hand Massey the ticket and walk away, and it certainly didn't authorize the use of a Taser in this situation. What is really interesting here is that in correctly describing a traffic stop as a situation that can “turn deadly fast,” the Herald reserved its sympathy and concern for the heavily-armed State agent – not the unarmed citizen. This is a question of “social mores,” the paper instructs us.

It is those “mores” that must change, and soon. It is the citizen who is owed reflexive deference, not the agent of the State. Even today, many police officers remember that principle and comport themselves accordingly. But when the not-so-exceptional exception occurs, the institutional bias of nearly every police agency is to defend those officers whose behavior is clearly illegal -- while quietly dismissing criminal charges, such as “resisting arrest” or “obstruction,” that result when a citizen makes a futile effort to defend himself.

In an ironic and instructive juxtaposition, Gardner's attack on Massey came at about the same time the Austin Police Department (APD) began to make amends for a remarkably similar assault by one of their own on a motorist on Thanksgiving 2006.

Officer Thomas O'Connor stopped 32-year-old Eugene Snelling (who was driving with his mother to a family Thanksgiving celebration) for driving five miles per hour faster than the posted speed limit and not having a rear license plate. Forty-five seconds later, O'Connor – who had dragged Snelling from the vehicle – shot the motorist with his Taser, despite the fact that Snelling did nothing that could be reasonably construed as a threat.

As the dashcam video of the incident documents, O'Connor was brusque and threatening when he approached Snelling's vehicle. Although he would later tell an internal affairs panel (.pdf) that Snelling refused to hand over his license and insurance information, the time index on the video proves that less than a second transpired between O'Connor's initial request and a second demand, which was delivered in a barking “command voice.”

Understandably put off by O'Connor's truculence, Snelling said, “Whoah, whoah, whoah” as he reached for his documents to comply with the demand. (As Snelling would later recount, O'Connor was "yelling from the get-go."

Salting his bellicosity with mockery, O'Connor shouted, “Not `whoa, whoa, whoa,'” reiterating the demand again. Fishing around for his documents, Snelling was simultaneously dealing with his agitated mother. Oh-- forgive me; did I mention that they're black, and that the APD has a reputation for needless brutality directed against minority citizens, and was under federal scrutiny at the time for the same?

Roughly twenty seconds after stopping Snelling, O'Connor ordered him out of the car, opening the door himself (something he was not legally authorized to do) and physically pulling the driver from his seat. At the same time, his hand went directly to his Taser before Snelling was clear of the vehicle.

Although he would later claim that he pulled the Taser because Snelling seemed to “reach his hand toward me” and “I felt threatened” -- oh, the poor dear! -- the video makes it clear that it was O'Connor's behavior that was needlessly aggressive and unmistakably threatening.

Forty-five seconds after stopping Eugene Snelling, Thomas O'Connor gives him a "ride on the Taser," while Snelling's mother watches in horror.

Predictably enough, O'Connor's immediate supervisor and the internal affairs panel initially exonerated him of wrongful use of the Taser because he “perceived a threat.” He was subsequently suspended for three days by Cathy Ellison, the interim chief of the embattled APD. O'Connor, a former Army MP (scroll down) who has reportedly used a Taser unnecessarily on at least one previous occasion, complained that his suspension was brutally unfair. (He sought to justify his aggressive attitude toward Snelling by saying, inter alia, that he has a "medical condition" -- I'm betting it's hypoglycemia -- that makes him "edgy" when he doesn't eat, as he hadn't on that day.)

Art Acevedo – who, unlike Ellison, appears to be a competent, professional officer – subsequently took over as Chief of the APD, and he recognized in O'Connor's behavior a clearly illicit and unnecessary use of potentially lethal force.

In a video message to APD officers, Acevedo put the matter quite plainly, urging them to ask themselves the following question:

“If a member of my family was stopped by a member of this police department, or any other police department, would I want them [sic] treated in the manner this suspect was treated?”

“Take a really hard look inside [yourself] and ask, `Am I really that officer?'” Acevedo continued, referring to O'Connor's conduct. “Am I treating people that way for a minor traffic violation? If you are, change your behavior.”

At least some Austin police officers – most likely, those who take seriously the idea that they are supposed to be peace officers, rather than an occupying army – responded to Chief Acevedo's challenge by apologizing to Snelling and his family.

I grant that this was a highly qualified gesture (the penitent officers emphasized that they spoke as individuals, not as representatives of the department), and one largely dictated by PR concerns. And one measure of the APD's internal sickness is found in the fact that this is the same department that fired the exemplary police officer Ramon Perez because Officer Perez, a devout Christian and stalwart Constitutionalist, refused to carry out an illegal order to use his Taser against a non-violent elderly suspect.



A complimentary caricature: Officer Ramon Perez, as depicted by an Austin cartoonist.

There is, nonetheless, some faint and fleeting cause for hope in the reform efforts undertaken by APD Chief Acevedo – particularly when contrasted with the sullen arrogance displayed by the UHP in defending the indefensible actions of Trooper Jon Gardner.

UPDATE, 12/3: They're Never Wrong

So, let's say -- and why not -- that you're with the Blytheville, Arkansas Police Department, largely because you can't find honest work.

You and your buddies are sent out to serve an arrest warrant on a guy named Travis Henderson, who failed to appear in court on a reckless driving charge.

You happen at random to come across a harmless-looking black fellow in his early 20s who just happens to be identified as Travis Henderson, albeit not the one you're looking for. This Travis Henderson -- who looks nothing like the mugshot you've been given -- is a mentally handicapped athlete who has received a lot of local publicity for his exploits in the Special Olympics.

So in spite of the fact that this is obviously not the suspect you're looking for, you brace the guy, and when he reacts as any rational person would -- that is, he takes offense at having his workout interrupted for no reason by a bunch of armed thugs -- you hit him with the Taser and arrest him for "resisting arrest" and "disorderly conduct."

Perhaps because you really didn't have reason to do any of this, you just give the guy a low-level "drive" stun, rather than the full treatment.

(Actually, Taser Incorporated has warned that using the "drive-stun" setting while placing the instrument directly against the victim's body is actually more dangerous than firing the darts and delivering the full-force shock.)

The official use-of-force report claims that this utterly gratuitous act of torture (it's called "pain compliance," which is a sanitized way of saying the same thing) is justified because, heck, the poor confused guy pulled away from a pack of three police officers who had no damn right to put their hands on him.

And according to their supervisors, the cops in this situation did the right thing. But then, they always do, no matter how many innocent people get hurt or killed.

"I just feel like ... like I've been treated like an animal or something," Mr. Henderson observed.

Not at all, Travis. There are laws against committing acts of pointless cruelty against animals, or even -- under the right circumstances -- so much as growling at a dog.

Unless, of course, the acts of animal cruelty in question are committed by those sanctified and omnicompetent Heroes in Blue. Then it's a crime to impede those acts.

Blytheville Police Chief Ross Thompson, who really should be placed in stocks and pelted with dead cats and rotten fruit, told the local television news that he stands by the Taser assault on Travis because, you know, he was resisting.

An innocent, mentally handicapped man was resisting the bullying overtures of police officers who knew that he wasn't the suspect they were seeking -- so, of course, it's Taser Time.

The officers involved in this atrocity are Michael Tovar, Brandon Bennett, and Jeremy Joseph Ward. The Chief's name, once again, is Ross Thompson. The Department's phone number is
(870)763-4411.


Dum spiro, pugno!

Imperial Dread

Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take one against our own. I must fairly say I dread our own power and our own ambition. I dread our being too much dreaded.... Sooner or later, this state of things must produce a combination against us which may end in our ruin.

Edmund Burke, Remarks on the Policy of the Allies, 1793

In the final decade of the 18^th Century, an alliance coalesced among conventional European powers to contain the insurgent revolutionary forces of Jacobin-ruled France. Edmund Burke, easily the most perceptive and persuasive critic of the French Revolution's abominations and atrocities, yielded to no man in his concerns about the ambitions of revolutionary rulers and their allies.

But Burke was consistent in his concerns about consolidated and unaccountable power, and he understood that nothing worthwhile would be gained by permitting the imperial British Government to acquire the power it accused the French of seeking.

Burke admonished countrymen unnerved by the prospect of France exporting its revolution abroad and building a continent-spanning Jacobin empire to regain their composure and try to see England as outsiders would:

“We are already in possession of almost all the commerce of the world.... If we should ... be absolutely able, without the least control, to hold the commerce of all other nations totally dependent on our good pleasure, we may say that we shall not abuse this astonishing, and hitherto unheard-of, power. But every other nation will think we shall abuse it.”

Since other nations were not as serenely convinced of Britain's bottomless benevolence and endless generosity, they would eventually form a “combination” to prevent it from exercising unchecked political and economic hegemony, Burke pointed out.

The contrived furor over the Iranian “threat” -- which has recently been dialed down to a low drone, rather than the persistent shrieking we heard a few months ago – prompts me to adapt Burke's insights to our own condition, living as we do in the world's largest and most powerful empire.

We are constantly told that Iran is a world-menacing power led by the most recent edition of Hitler (re) Incarnate. Yet unless I missed something, Iran's military doesn't occupy a meter of foreign ground, even though Tehran does have allies and surrogates in Lebanon and Iraq, and warm relations with Venezuela's clown-tyrant Hugo Chavez. The Iranian regime has also been plausibly implicated in an act of anti-Jewish terrorism in Argentina some years ago.

Abhorrent as its ruling elite may be, Iran is not an aggressive power. Though some of its rulers may occasionally emit gusts of irrational nostalgia for the glories of Xerxes' empire, it requires an even greater investment in lunacy to believe that Iran poses a global threat.

Virtual imperialism: Understandably reluctant to visit "liberated" Baghdad, Emperor Bush holds a joint videoconference with Iraqi puppet Nouri al-Maliki to sign a "Cooperation and Friendship" accord.

Meanwhile, Washington – which maintains a globe-straddling empire of military garrisons -- is putting the finishing touches on an “agreement” with its puppet regime in Baghdad, a Soviet-style pact bearing the Soviet-esque title “Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States of America.”

(Does anybody else suspect that every totalitarian bureaucracy – whether in Moscow, Beijing, or Washington – includes a group of scribes who are paid by the syllable to devise grandiose titles for imperial pronouncements?)

Owing to the fact that the Empire's Mesopotamian province is not yet secure enough for the Emperor to pay a personal visit for an official ceremony, the agreement was jointly signed by the Swaggering Fool and his Iraqi satrap, Nouri al-Maliki, via “secure video conference.”

The key quid-pro-quo in the arrangement is this: US forces will remain in Iraq in some configuration to prop up the Shi'ite-dominated regime (even as they build little Sunni fiefdoms ruled by al-Qaeda-connected warlords). For their part, Washington's Iraqi puppets will permit politically connected corporate interests rape and plunder Iraq. That's part of the long-anticipated payoff envisioned during the heady first months of Bush the Dumber's rule, when Viceroy Cheney's secretive energy task force pored over maps of Iraqi oil fields with predatory intent.

That energy task force, in turn, was the outgrowth of a report published in December 2000 by a Joint Task Force on Petroleum organized by the Council on Foreign Relations and the James A. Baker III Institute at Rice University. The final report of that task force (published with the “generous support” of Khalid al-Turki of Saudi Arabia, fretted that Iraq has “become a key `swing' producer [of petroleum], posing a difficult situation for the US government.... Saddam is a `destabilizing influence ... to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East.”

Therefore, concluded the CFR report, the US should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq, including military, energy, economic, and political/diplomatic assessments.

According to investigative reporter Greg Palast, who cites individuals with direct knowledge of the events, the report was handed directly to Cheney. He then convened an energy task force whose membership was largely identical to that of the CFR/Baker Institute task force. Then along came 9-11, and after making a feint in the direction of avenging the attack, the Bush Regime pivoted in the direction of Iraq.

And now, with 14 permanent US military installations sprouting up in Iraq, the “Declaration” signed by Bush and al-Maliki – essentially, an illegal military treaty completed without the constitutionally mandated Senate ratification -- offers yet another avenue to expand the war to Iran.

As Justin Raimondo points out, the “Declaration” contains a provision authorizing US military to conduct operations in support of “the Republic of Iraq in its efforts to combat all terrorist groups, at the forefront of which is al-Qaeda, Saddamists, and all other outlaw groups regardless of affiliation, and destroy their logistical networks and their sources of finance, and defeat and uproot them from Iraq.”

Raimondo observes:

“It's in this context that the Kyl-Lieberman resolution, enthusiastically supported by Hillary Clinton as well as the Bush administration, takes on special importance: having targeted the Iranian security force known as al-Quds, or the Revolutionary Guards, as an officially designated `terrorist' group, the American garrison is already authorized to take on Tehran. The road to war with Iran is paved, and we're ready to roll no matter who sits in the driver's seat.”

All that's missing is a suitable pretext, and if Iran doesn't provide one the Bush Regime has proven itself capable of conjuring one ex nihilo.

But, as Burke would expect, Washington's blatant grab for political control over energy sources in the Near East has inspired other powers to push back. Beijing's eagerness to stiff-arm US naval vessels seeking to dock in Hong Kong offers one illustration. Moscow's moves to upgrade its strategic nuclear forces presents another.

But the most acute threat to the American Imperium, as Hugo Chavez gleefully observed at the recent OPEC summit, is the ever-accelerating demise of the dollar. "Soon they won’t be talking any more about dollars because the dollar is on a free fall and the empire of the dollar is coming down,” gloated the Venezuelan ruler, a comment we should file under “Things That Are True Despite Being Said By Loathsome People.”

Burke wouldn't be surprised to learn that Washington's ambitions have engendered combinations devoted to bringing about its ruin. But he would likely be amazed at the audacity of our rulers in trying to build an Empire on money borrowed from those (such as Beijing's ruling caste) who stand to gain the most from its eventual demise.

And like our Founders – whose courage and wisdom he appreciated, and with whose grievances he sympathized – Burke would be astonished and disgusted by complacent Americans who cannot understand how empire-building always ends in misery and servitude.

Coming Soon To A Province Of Washington's Empire --

Dum spiro, pugno!

Let's ... Be Careful Out There (Very Important Update, 11/28)

Vancouver, B.C. October 14: Canadian police swarm 40-year-old Polish expatriate Robert Dziekanski and electrocute him to death with Taser International's renowned "non-lethal" implement of torture.

(For the November 28 update, see the bottom of this essay.)

The kind folks at Taser International, makers of the eponymous portable torture device that is rapidly becoming notorious for its overuse by police, maintain a charitable foundation for the families of police officers killed in the line of duty.

On November 19, the makers of the reliably lethal “non-lethal” stun gun donated $500,000 to the Taser Foundation for Fallen Officers. This is sofa-cushion change for a company that saw its profits double during the third quarter of this year, surging to $28.5 million on the strength of a bull market, both domestically and internationally, for implements of State coercion.

Coercion through individualized torture is Taser's business, and that business is booming.

“We lose an average of 145 officers per year and the Taser Foundation provides immediate financial support to these families during terrible times of crisis,” explains Gerry Hills, the Foundation's executive director.

(Continues after the jump)

From Sci-Fi to Street Reality: In the Nazi-like "Mirror Universe" of Star Trek, personnel carried a Taser-like device called an "Agonizer," which was used to administer instant punishment to inept or insubordinate personnel. Go here (at about 1:13) to see the sci-fi device used against a fictional character. Go here and here to see the real thing used needlessly against living human beings.

See the video below for an account of the death of an elderly, wheelchair-bound, schizophrenic woman through Taser torture at the hands of police:

Providing for bereaved families of fallen police is a worthy undertaking. But if Taser executives were acting out of genuine altruism, rather than cynical corporatist calculations, they would create a similar fund to aid victims of illicit police violence and their traumatized families.

There's little doubt that police work can be a dangerous occupation, and that it is often a thankless one for those attracted to it by an honorable desire to protect the innocent. Not to put too fine a point on the matter, individuals of that sort are not over-represented in today's “law enforcement” community.

And as I've pointed out before, the role of police officers today – whatever it had previously been – is not to protect the public, but to enforce the will of the State: Police officers are not legally or civilly liable to provide protection to individual citizens, but they are required to enforce the State's mandates, however asinine or corrupt they may be. This is why, in my view, episodes of genuine police heroism in defense of the innocent are worthy of celebration – well as careful examination with an eye for the counter-intuitive finding.

Consider the paradigmatic case of police heroism, that of the officers who raced into the stricken World Trade Center towers on 9-11. Like most people, I cannot imagine dashing into a building I know faces imminent collapse in order to rescue strangers. The heroism of the 23 NYPD officers who died at Ground Zero is genuine, and isn't diminished one whit by the fact that they were “just doing their jobs.” The same can be said of the firefighters and rescue workers who likewise perished while trying to save the lives of others.

Admirable and inspiring as it is, this example of authentic police heroism in the face of lethal violence is entirely unsuited as a symbol of routine police work. Most police officers – “most” in this case being a term that leaves the smallest quantum imaginable as a remainder – will serve out their careers without being exposed to anything resembling the mortal danger faced by the brave NYPD officers who died on 9-11.

That's because police work simply isn't that dangerous.

As Forbes magazine noted in late 2002, the atrocity at Ground Zero dramatically skewed data on workplace fatality rates collected each year by the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics through its “Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries.” In “a normal year, like 2000,” explained Forbes, “the most dangerous jobs do not involve firefighting or police work; they involve cutting timber and fishing.”

In an essay drawing on the most recent BLS findings, David R. Butcher of Industrial Market Trends compiled the following roster of the ten most dangerous U.S. occupations:

*Fishers and Fishing Industry Workers, whose fatality rate was 142 deaths per 100,000 workers;

*Pilots and Flight Engineers, particularly crop dusters, test pilots, and chopper drivers (88/100,000);

*Loggers (82/100,000);

*Iron and Steel Workers (61/100,ooo);

*Refuse and Recyclable Material Collectors (42/100,000);

*Farmers and Ranchers (38/100,000);

*Electrical Power Line Workers – Installers and Repairers (35/100,000)

*Roofers (34/100,000);

*Drivers – truckers or sales personnel (27/100,000);

*Agricultural Workers (22/100,000);

One arresting aspect of this list is the fact that not a single one of the most dangerous occupations is a “public” sector job. Some of them (such as garbage collectors and test pilots) might work for government, either directly or via a contractor, but there isn't a single job on that list that “must” be done by government. The fatality rate for all government occupations, incidentally, is 2.5 per 100,000.

Which means that in our society, as in every other, it is the private producers, rather than the parasitical tax-feeders, who face the greatest dangers on a daily basis.

If you work as a logger, farmer, field worker, truck driver, or in an occupation that requires a long daily commute, your job is statistically more dangerous than law enforcement.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were more than 1.1 million full-time police personnel on duty as of 2004. Rounding that figure down to 1 million, and accepting Taser International's officer fatality figure of an average of 145 per year, would produce an average workplace fatality rate of about 14.5 per 100,000 employees for the police – well below the lethal attrition rate the BLS found for Agricultural Workers. While this comparison isn't an exact match (the BLS figure encompasses all work-related deaths, not just those resulting from violent crime), it's close enough to validate my point.

A new book entitled Some Gave All: A History of Baltimore Police Officers Killed in the Line of Duty, estimates that between 1792 and 2007, 17,900 federal, state and local law enforcement officers were killed. That works out to an average of a little more than 83 a year over 215 years. And it stands to reason that the annual death toll – assuming the figure is accurate -- must have risen dramatically at some point in order to pull that average up (for one thing, there were no federal law enforcement officers prior to the early 20^th Century).

This would suggest that, statistically, law enforcement has never been a particularly dangerous occupation, even during the frontier period. Make that “particularly” during the frontier period, when miners, railroad workers, homesteaders, and others probably faced sudden and often violent death much more often than law officers did.

(And don't even get me started on the subject of the mortality rate for dispossessed Indians taken into the care of the federal government.)

By way of contrast, there is reason to believe that the danger of violent encounters between common citizens and police has grown appreciably in recent years.

A study publicized by Wired about a year ago suggested that an American's odds of being killed by terrorists were slightly lower than his odds of being shot by a law enforcement officer. That comparison isn't entirely sound, since even now the overwhelming majority of those killed by police are people suspected of committing crimes against persons or property, rather than commonplace citizens innocently trapped in bad circumstances.

For me, this is a key question: Is the number of unambiguously innocent citizens killed by the police greater than the number of police killed in the line of duty?

A very incomplete map of paramilitary police raids involving deaths or injuries (click to enlarge).

According to Joseph D. McNamara, a former police chief in Kansas City, Missouri and San Jose, California, police work is actually less dangerous today that it was in the late 1960s and 1970s. Writing in the Wall Street Journal about a year ago, McNamara observed that 51 officers were killed in the line of duty in 2006 “out of some 700,000 to 800,000 American cops [meaning sworn personnel with arrest powers]. That is far fewer than the police fatalities occurring when I patrolled New York's highest crime precincts.”

If this is the case, why is police violence continuing to escalate?

“Simply put, the police culture in our country has changed,” McNamara explains. “An emphasis on `officer safety' and paramilitary training pervades today's policing, in contrast to the older culture, which held that cops didn't shoot until they were about to shoot or be stabbed. Police in large cities formerly carried revolvers holding six .38-caliber rounds. Nowadays, police carry semi-automatic pistols with 16 high-caliber rounds, shotguns and military assault rifles, weapons once relegated to SWAT teams facing extraordinary circumstances. Concern about such firepower in densely populated areas hitting innocent citizens has given way to an attitude that police are fighting a war against drugs and crime and must be heavily armed.”

Arguably the single biggest source of unnecessary police violence is the “War on Drugs,” which has also nurtured police corruption and begotten countless abuses of the Bill of Rights. That “war” is actually a perverse symbiosis between the criminal underworld – which has a federally enforced monopoly on marketing substances once entirely legal in this country – and the law enforcement agencies that suck up huge federal subsidies in the name of “fighting” those same drug traffickers.

This cynical charade has abetted the militarization of law enforcement and the proliferation of no-knock raids, which result in needless death and life-threatening injury to both police and innocent civilians.

A typical monument memorializing police who died in the line of duty. Where are the monuments to innocent civilians who died needlessly from police violence?

These are some of the reasons why Chief McNamara, like many other current and former police officers of integrity and principle, joined Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), which is agitating for an end to the War on Drugs, which is the single largest preventable cause of law enforcement violence against the innocent.

There are reasons – both constitutional and ethical – to believe that the law enforcement apparatus as it presently exists is fundamentally misbegotten.

Pending that welcome day when the public can force the political class to revise or abolish the institutional impediments to genuine individual liberty, the most useful reforms would be to end the Drug War, and to begin the comprehensive de-federalization of law enforcement at all levels.

This won't happen, of course, until the public at large liberates itself from many State-imposed delusions, among them the idea that police work is somehow a sacred and uniquely dangerous occupation.

Update, November 28

Thanks to a comment from an alert and well-informed reader, I am now aware of Chief McNamara's long and impassioned commitment to the cause of civilian disarmament. How one can be so clear-headed in opposing drug prohibition, yet so misguided on the even more fundamental question of the right of individuals to armed self-defense, is a question I'm not competent to answer.

This is particularly perplexing in light of the fact that McNamara clearly understands the growing danger posed by militarizing the police -- yet he doesn't understand how this process is related to the question of civilian disarmament. He clearly wants to de-militarize the police, but enforcing "gun control" laws leads to exactly the opposite result: If the State is going to compel this citizenry to surrender its firearms, it will ultimately have to resort to military or para-military means, by either militarizing the police or deploying the National Guard or other military assets domestically.

Vide what took place in post-Katrina New Orleans as a perfect example:

All hail our heroic local police at work!

Men of integrity and principle can be earnestly mistaken about some important matters; I think this best describes McNamara's present situation. It is to be hoped that he will change his views on this supremely important question. Pending that welcome development, his insights regarding the dangers of police militarization are all the more valuable, coming as they do from someone who cannot be accused of harboring "anti-government" sentiments.

A Brief Personal Note:

I have just learned that my former colleague Gary Benoit, editor of The New American magazine, is seriously ill. For many years before this happened, Gary was a good and generous friend. Those of you who pray, please take a moment to offer a petition to God on behalf of Gary and his very large and delightful family.

Dum spiro, pugno!