* * Did we lose?

THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN MY REGULAR COLUMN IN THE NEWS MESSENGER, THE BI-WEEKLY PAPER FROM MONTGOMERY COUNTY, VIRGINIA

Right at the top on the front cover of this fine newspaper the other week was an article about a massive new 54,000 pound, $730,000.00 military vehicle now in the possession of our own Montgomery County Sheriff’s department. Is anybody bothered by this except me?

As I drive through downtown of my native Christiansburg, noticing that the Browns Drug Store, the Cromer Furniture, the Palace Theater, and the Music House of my youth are long gone, and I’m wondering if our sense of security has vanished with them. What kind of country do we live in now? Knowing that this massive vehicle of war is ready to defend our streets paradoxically makes me feel less safe, not more.

Back in September of 2001, our nation was attacked by al Qaeda, with 3000 deaths. At that point, our national leadership launched what they called a “War on Terror.” Strange, I thought at the time, that our enemy in this new kind of war was not another country (as Germany and Japan in World War II) or even an organization (like al Qaeda), but instead a tactic. It was like declaring a war on blitzkrieg or trench warfare. “Terror” would never sign a peace treaty. Terror could never be defeated, meaning that we’d be in an eternal war. In the intervening years, it has become clear that in fact we are in an eternal war. We are our own new enemy.

Is it possible that we might be attacked again by terrorists, either foreign or domestic? Of course. We mourn those 3000 deaths profoundly and rightfully need to do all we can to prevent such a thing from ever happening again. But 30 Americans die every day from gun violence. The militarization of civilian populations and police forces is making this worse, not better.

What the heck is such a vehicle useful for? By far the worst incidence of violence this area has ever seen was the tragedy of April 16, 2007 at Virginia Tech. Sheriff Whitt argues, “If we’d had a vehicle like this, close by, had a vehicle like this on the scene… we could have deployed our troops closer to the scene.” First, at that event, a deranged murderer fired 170 rounds, averaging one shot every three seconds, but the bloodbath lasted a mere nine minutes. That’s less time than I’d guess it would take to get this monster truck out of the garage. And second, are the people we once called “officers” now “troops”?

So if it is not much use in a truly horrific event like the Tech tragedy, then what? Perhaps it is good for things like drug arrests. We can only assume that if our police departments HAVE these monsters, they’re likely to use them. And in fact they do. According to Radley Balko, author of book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces, “Today in America SWAT teams violently smash into private homes more than one hundred times per day.” Will these weapons not be used against peaceful assemblies or protest marches? Will you or someone you care about not face off one day against this thing?

Access to these weapons of war lets local officers avoid the more subtle but ultimately effective practices of walking or driving the beat and knowing where problems are likely to arise and who is more likely to cause them. And they create a tone of suspicion, mistrust, and fear.

Gun rights advocates argue that we don’t have a weapons problem, but a mental health problem. In a way, they’re right: we do have a mental health problem. Our problem is that we think our safety and security come from pugnaciousness and belligerence, vested in the notion that we must fear each other and gain our security from having a bigger weapon than the next guy. If that isn’t a sign of a mental health problem, I don’t know what is.

We have a problem that the NRA, formerly a sportsmen’s club, has turned into the political advocacy wing of the armaments industry and has prevented us from taking actions to remove weapons of war from private hands. We have a problem that among First World nations on earth, we are near the top of places statistically to be victims of gun violence.

Why are we arming our civilian police departments with military equipment? Why do we have no money to fix our roads, pay our teachers, or equip our schools, but an endless supply to wage wars not only overseas but against ourselves? We teach history in our schools with all our various wars, but why are we not teaching peace? Why are we not teaching negotiation and conflict resolution? The Soviet Union has collapsed, but we are in an arms race against ourselves. Our new enemy is us.

We were told a dozen years ago that we were fighting a War on Terror. It is clear that Terror has won, and we, the peaceful, fair-minded citizens have lost. It makes me weep for our country.