The American Spectator
June 2000
"Good Government Guns"
by James Bovard
What is the difference between a private machine gun and a
government machine gun?
Thirty years.
Two days after the April 22 raid in Little Havana, a Justice
Department lawyer implored the Supreme Court to permit judges to
add 30 extra years to the prison sentences of anyone who commits
a violent crime with an automatic weapon. Such weapons are so
heinous, the lawyer asserted, that there was no need to have a
jury verdict on whether defendants actually used them; instead, a
judge should have authority to throw people into prison for
what's left of their lives based solely on the allegation that
automatic weapons were in the same building as they were when a
crime was committed. (The case involved the excessive sentences
that a vindictive federal judge slapped on Branch Davidian
survivors of the April 19, 1993 fire at Waco.)
But government machine guns are different. As we learned from the
Clinton administration and much of the media, a machine gun in
the hands of a federal agent is now a symbol of benevolence and
concern for a child's well-being. The ensuing battle over the
raid has gone to the heart of the administration's efforts to
anesthetize Americans to government. The INS attack went pretty
much as planned--the agents grabbed six-year-old Elian Gonzalez
and left shattered doors, a broken bed, roughed-up
Cuban-Americans, and two NBC cameramen writhing in pain from
stomach-kicks or rifle-butts to the head. The only problem:
Associated Press stringer Alan Diaz snapped his famous photo.
Administration officials scrambled to provide Americans a deeper
understanding of the stunning image. Deputy Attorney General Eric
Holder asserted that the boy "was not taken at the point of a
gun." When challenged about the machine gun, Holder explained:
"They were armed agents who went in there who acted very
sensitively." Holder denied that the raid occurred at night, even
though 5:15 a.m. was more than an hour before sunrise. He
asserted that "the agents knocked on the door once, they waited
ten seconds, they knocked on the door a second time, waited 20
seconds, then at that time went into the house." Film footage
clearly shows the agents storming the front door with a battering
ram within a few seconds of entering the yard.
For their part, the agents made no attempt to present the
residents with the dubious warrant they had squeezed out of a
low-ranking federal magistrate the evening before.
Television footage of an INS agent absconding with Elian showed
horror on the boy's face. (One cynic commented that the female
agent looked like a vampire excitedly carrying away her
breakfast.) INS chief Doris Meissner assuaged concerns about the
boy's well-being by revealing that Elian was given Play-Doh on
the government plane that took him to Washington. Meissner
declared, "The squeezing of Play-Doh is the best thing that you
can do for a child who might be experiencing stress." But what's
the correct dosage of Play-Doh after a child has faced a 30-round
magazine?
In her raid-day press conference, Attorney General Janet Reno
denied Diaz's photo showed anything out of the ordinary. "As I
understand it, if you look at it carefully, it shows that the gun
was pointed to the side, and that the finger was not on the
trigger." Admittedly the muzzle of the gun was not inside Elian's
mouth, just pointed toward the man holding the boy. The Hechler
and Koch MP-5 submachine gun sprays 800 rounds a minute--and a
finger a half inch away from the trigger means nothing. The agent
did not even have both hands on the machine gun: If the weapon
had fired, he would have had no control over who got sprayed. In
a puff interview on NBC's "Today" show two days later, Reno
declared: "One of the things that is so very important is that
the force was not used. It was a show of force that prevented
people from getting hurt." Showing enough docility to be a
Washington beat reporter, NBC interviewer Katie Couric made no
mention of the two NBC employees who got whacked by feds during
the raid.
Asked about excessive force, White House Spokesman Joe Lockhart
emphasized that the agents "drove up in white mini-vans"--as if
vehicle color proved this was a mission of mercy. Besides, the
administration had learned its Waco lesson: no tanks or Bradley
Fighting Vehicles. Lockhart implored the media: "It's certainly
my hope that those who are in the business of describing such
things to the public will use great care and great perspective"
in how they presented Diaz's photo.
President Clinton stepped up to a Rose Garden microphone to
announce that "there was no alternative but to enforce the
decision of the INS and the federal court." Which federal
court--the one that denied the administration a requested court
order? Clinton then added, "The most important thing was to treat
this in a lawful manner, according to the established process."
Established where? At Waco? Ruby Ridge? Kosovo? The media did its
part to drown Americans in political unreality. Less than three
hours after the raid, CBS news anchor Dan Rather asserted: "Even
if the photographer was in the house legally...there is the
question of the privacy, beginning with the privacy of the
child."
Within eight hours of the raid, CNN host Judy Woodruff
characterized the morning's action as "the Elian Gonzalez
handover." James Warren, Washington bureau chief of the Chicago
Tribune, fretted the picture "will ignite all the crazies."
MSNBC's Brian Williams warned a few days after the raid that the
government's action could be "stirring up the right-wing
whackos." A laudatory Washington Post article claimed Reno had
personally insured that not all journalists would be beaten
during the raid.
Much of the news media--including Time magazine and the New York
Times--gave far greater play to a Christmas card-like photo of
the father-son reunion snapped by $800-an-hour lawyer Gregory
Craig (and distributed by Justice Department officials) than to
the AP action photo. The Times reported that "the newspaper's top
editors believed that the photo of the agent with the assault
rifle needed to be put in context, because it was not clear where
the gun was pointed and whether the agent's finger was on the
trigger. The editors decided to run that photo with an article by
one of the newspaper's media critics about the photos and how
they were used." The Times gave the AP photo treatment usually
reserved for doubtful propaganda images from Communist regimes.
New York Times writer Thomas Friedman, in a column headlined
"Reno for President," declared that the machine gun photo "warmed
my heart" and said it should be put "up in every visa line in
every U.S. consulate around the world, with a caption that reads:
'America is a country where the rule of law rules. This picture
illustrates what happens to those who defy the rule of law and
how far our government and people will go to preserve it.'" Garry
Wills, author of A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust
of Government, wrote in a Times op-ed: "The familiar picture of
the menacing INS agent flourishing a machine gun shows us an
officer trying to avoid violence, not one inviting it." Wills
concluded, "The readiness of people to deplore 'jack-booted'
tactics reveals the intransigence that made the rescue
necessary." In other words, call us fascists and we'll give you
fascism.
The American Civil Liberties Union was conspicuously silent. In
1995 it had joined the National Rifle Association and other
conservative groups to protest the militarization of federal law
enforcement. But the week after the raid the ACLU seemed
preoccupied championing gay marriage and partial-birth abortion.
According to the Los Angeles Times, there was a hot internal
debate at the ACLU on whether to react; eventually, the
organization quietly announced that it was "troubled" by the
incident. Forgotten was the ACLU's defense in the 1980's of
12-year-old Walter Polovchak's right not to be forcibly returned
to the Soviet Union.
A striking thing about Clinton's Rose Garden press appearance was
the hang-dog look on his face. He appeared to know full well that
the Diaz photo would undercut his efforts to delegitimize fear of
government. For Clinton, government is "a champion of national
purpose"--"the instrument of our national community" and "a
progressive instrument of the common good." In a speech to the
Democratic National Committee on January 21, 1997, he bragged:
"We ended the notion that government is the problem.... Make no
mistake, our view prevailed." Now Americans are less likely to
regard government as a hovercraft floating gently above their
lives.
The photo also undercuts Clinton's attempts to persuade Americans
that only government officials should be allowed to possess
firearms. Clinton has been far and away the most anti-gun
president in American history. Since 1993, he has signaled his
desire to ban ownership of up to 35 million guns. In 1996, he
championed legislation that created 100,000 gun-ban zones
nationwide and he helped enact a law that retroactively turned a
million gun owners into felons. His FBI created an illegal
national registry of all people who bought firearms after
November 1998. His administration explicitly argued before the
Supreme Court that every gun owner must be presumed guilty, the
same as drug dealers--simply because the gun owner should have
known that guns are dangerous items subject to regulation.
In office Clinton has never made a single public remark
recognizing that a citizen may have legitimately used a firearm
in self-defense. In Clinton's view, privately owned six-shooters
are a dire threat to public safety, even if kept in a dresser
drawer in the bedroom of a private house--while government
machine guns pose no threat, even if pointed at a cowering child.
James Bovard is the author of Freedom in Chains (St. Martin's
Press). This article is adapted from his forthcoming "'Feeling
Your Pain': The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the
Clinton-Gore Years (St. Martin's, August 2000).
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
=================================================================
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths,
misdirections
and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and
minor
effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said,
CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
<A HREF="http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
