Toshi’s earlier post about the Active Denial System, and the recent publication by Wikileaks of a US Army Counterinsurgency Manual (see below), remind me of this very important but oft-overlooked fact:

Indeed, the public is The Enemy. The militarization of domestic law enforcement, and the migration of practices from the so-called “counterinsurgency” wars of Central America in the 1980’s to the U.S. military abroad and even to domestic policy gives the game away.

Indeed, reading excerpts from Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces is like reading the New York City police department’s planning documents for the Republican National Convention in 2004:

Examples of counterintelligence measures to use are

• Background investigations and records checks of persons in sensitive positions and persons whose loyalty may be questionable.
• Maintenance of files on organizations, locations, and individuals of counterintelligence interest.
• Control of civilian movement within government-controlled areas.
• Identification systems to minimize the chance of insurgents gaining access to installations or moving freely.
• Unannounced searches and raids on suspected meeting places.
• Censorship.

For the 2004 Republican Convention in New York, the police department spied on peaceful civil society groups for more than a year leading up to the protests, maintained files on organizations of interest, controlled and limited movement of civilians anywhere near the convention center or protest sites, established an ID system for conventioneers, infiltrated protest groups and acted as agents provocateur, and preemptively arrested thousands of people and held them without charge or access to counsel. And the city fought to keep secret thousands of pages of documents pertaining to the department’s planning remain withheld, despite numerous lawsuits.

What New York City did isn’t new. Indeed, before the latest Iraq War started, civil society groups were planning protests in Pittsburgh, and conducting training on how to handle police tactics. One participant told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

But in the last few years, we’ve witnessed the militarization of the police department. Cops snapping pictures, taking names, shooting rubber bullets — that’s stuff we always thought happened in Central America, although it was often U.S.-funded. What we’re finding is, it’s come home.

It’s interesting to read about this from the officers’ point of view, too. POLICE Magazine’s article from last month advises units of specially-trained officers to prepare for protests and rallies:

How these units will respond in the field depends on the rules of engagement set by their agency and the law. But here’s a good idea of the tools they will need to perform their mission: empty hands, batons, riot shields, electronic control devices, specialty impact munitions, chemical munitions, air launcher projectiles, K-9s, sidearms, shotguns, rifles, 37/40mm launchers.

The best part of it is, the media and the public (and particularly the police) usually claim that the protesters turned to violence. The next time you hear that claim, remember who brought “sidearms, shotguns, rifles, 37/40mm launchers”, and who brought puppets