{"id":256555,"date":"2016-07-18T03:49:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-18T03:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/how-extrajudicial-executions-became-war-policy-in-washington\/"},"modified":"2016-07-18T14:34:07","modified_gmt":"2016-07-18T14:34:07","slug":"how-extrajudicial-executions-became-war-policy-in-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/how-extrajudicial-executions-became-war-policy-in-washington\/","title":{"rendered":"How Extrajudicial Executions Became \u2018War\u2019 Policy in Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Originally posted at TomDispatch<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

Strangely, amid the spike in racial
\n tensions after the killing of two black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota,
\n and of five white police officers by a black sharpshooter in Dallas, one American
\n reality has gone unmentioned. The U.S. has been fighting wars \u2013 declared,
\n half-declared, and undeclared \u2013 for almost 15 years and, distant as they are,
\n they\u2019ve been coming home in all sorts of barely noted ways. In the years
\n in which the U.S. has up-armored globally, the country has also seen an arms
\n race developing on the domestic front. As vets have returned from their
\n Iraq and Afghan tours of duty, striking numbers of them have gone into police work<\/a> at a time when American weaponry,
\n vehicles, and military equipment \u2013 including, for instance, MRAPs<\/a> (mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles)
\n \u2013 have poured<\/a> off America\u2019s distant battlefields
\n and, via<\/a> the Pentagon, into police departments
\n nationwide. And while the police were militarizing<\/a>, gun companies have been marketing<\/a> battlefield-style assault rifles to
\n Americans by the millions<\/a>, at the very moment when it has become
\n ever more possible for citizens to carry weapons of every sort in a concealed
\n or open<\/a> fashion in public.<\/p>\n

The result in Dallas: Micah Johnson,
\n a disturbed Army Reserves veteran, who spent a tour of duty in Afghanistan and
\n practiced military tactics in his backyard<\/a>, armed with an SKS semi-automatic assault rifle<\/a>, wearing full body armor, and angry
\n over police killings of black civilians, took out those five white officers.
\n One of them was a Navy vet who had served<\/a> three tours of duty in Iraq and another
\n a former Marine who had trained<\/a> local police for DynCorp, a private
\n contractor, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, civilian protesters, also armed<\/a> with assault rifles (quite legal in
\n the streets of Dallas), scattered as the first shots rang out and were, in some
\n cases, taken in by the police as suspects. And at least two unarmed protesters
\n were wounded<\/a> by Johnson. (Think of that,
\n in his terms, as \u201ccollateral damage.\u201d) In the end, he would be killed
\n by a Remotec Andros F5 robot, built by weapons-maker Northrop Grumman, carrying<\/a> a pound of C4 plastic explosive, and
\n typical of robots that police departments now possess<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In other words, this incident was capped
\n by the first use of deadly force by a drone in the United States. Consider
\n that a war-comes-home upping of the ante. Already, reports<\/a> the Defense One website, makers of
\n military-grade robots \u2013 a burgeoning field for the Pentagon \u2013 are imagining
\n other ways to employ such armed bots not only on our distant battlefields but
\n at home in a future in which they will be \u201cuseful, cheap, and ubiquitous,\u201d and
\n capable of Tasing<\/a> as well as killing.<\/p>\n

Of course, among the many things<\/a> that have also come home<\/a>…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Strangely, amid the spike in racial tensions after the killing of two black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota, and of five white police officers by a black sharpshooter in Dallas, one American reality has gone unmentioned. The U.S. has been fighting wars \u2013 declared, half-declared, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-256555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire","7":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}