The Two face Hypocrisy of US Foreign Policy

I have been writing and expounding on US foreign policy since the early 1980s. My first or one of my earliest essays was called “Israel’s fascist Penumbra” which was published in the Black Students Association Journal at Memphis State University in 1985.

It addressed the “do anything” for Israel mentality and our traditionally mistaken monolithic conviction of Arabs and Africans worldwide, that we often dissemble under the shadow of peace and agoraphobia. What is common regarding now and then and even times prior is the “do as I say and not as I do” legacy of colonialist and imperial belief orientations that place all European in origin at the summit of rational behavior and what is deemed to be acceptable.

On the one hand we vilify the Arab and African States for their desire for governments to run as theocracies, yet we do the same here. Promulgating policies based on religious beliefs and biblical guidance. Our own founding as a nation saw the assertion that Africans were less valuable and more akin to live stock than human beings. An edict that presented itself in policies from slavery to Jim Crow and segregation. In Oklahoma, a law was recently passed that bars courts from considering Shariah law when deciding cases was put on hold. And we are well aware of the tense debate facilitated via the discussion of abortion.

We condemn terrorist for their no holds barred attacks on America, yet we support going to Somalia and just killing everyone in sight as if their lives are less important than ours to avenge the deaths of four Christian Missionaries who were not asked to come to their country in the first place. We support invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq and manufacture policy and war to remove leaders we label tyrants and dictators and autocrats yet give similar men billions in aid annually and historically and invite them to the Whitehouse for dinner pretending as if their blood is not on our hands from the tanks and fighter we give them.

We supported Chiang Kai-Shek’s ROC government from the 1930s to 1949 in a civil war that saw the murder of tens of thousands. In Chilie we funded General Augusto Pinochet who murdered and tortured thousands from 1973 to 1990. Then there was Suharto in Indonesia and Papa and baby Doc in Haiti.

But it is to only be expected for unfortunately we too are a nation of terrorist and celebrate such resonantly. In Mississippi, there is an attempt to venerate Nathan Bedford Forrest, a man whose image on horseback I road past almost daily in my home town of Memphis, Tennessee. Yes, 150 years after the start of the Civil War people want to celebrate a murderer who founded a terrorist organization called the Ku Klux Klan. An organization from its inception main goal was to conduct inordinate acts of violence solely on African Americans in the South eventually including the bombing deaths of four girls attending Sunday school in a Church in 1963.

This man was also known for what he did on April 12, 1864 at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, when General Nathan Bedford Forrest captured the fort with his 1,500. In the process, according to eyewitness accounts like General Kilpatrick (USA), Forrest “nailed Negroes to the fences, set fire to the fences, and burned the Negroes to death.” More than 300 African American Union troops were massacred then.

But let me not digress, the point is that US foreign policy is the result of constructs that are two-faced. For if other did to us what we did to them we would be extremely upset and throwing hissy fits. We are so shallow, self-centered and heedless. Yes we are hypocrites and this hypocrisy may be what destroys us, just as it leads to behaviors that spoliated ancient Rome.

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'Stop, Question, Frisk' Tactics in NYC Reminiscent of Slave Patrols

In order for slavery to be effective as practiced in the United States, the peculiar institution had to maintain strict control over slaves both on and off the plantation. Runaways represented a loss of labor and productivity, so to reduce the chance of that occurring, plantation owners established slave patrols.

Slave patrols had the authority to question, and sometimes punish, any slave they encountered traveling between plantations. Their general objective was control of the slave population through physical intimidation. Kenneth Stampp described slave patrols as a pseudo-police force that were even sanctioned by local political bodies. In her book Slave Catchers, Slave Resisters, Sally E. Hadden pointed out that the system of slave patrols that existed from the 1700s through the Civil War, helped give rise to the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction.

That was history, but today in Brooklyn, N.Y., this practice continues. Nightly on the streets and around the public housing complexes in the Brownsville neighborhood, large contingents of police officers, most fresh to the beat patrol, question, frisk and detain people via the controversial tactic known as “Stop, Question, Frisk.”

Just entering a public housing project for these officers is reason enough to ask for identification, and run warrant checks. They even stop youth for riding bicycles on the sidewalk.

The Center for Constitutional Rights and the New York Civil Liberties Union reported that between January 2006 and March 2010, police made nearly 52,000 stops in an eight-block area. Police recorded the names of those stopped regardless of whether they were arrested or not. This is roughly equal to one stop a year for each of the estimated 14,000 neighborhood residents.

These activities result in very few arrests (less than 1 percent), in contrast to the 6 percent of stops that result in arrests across the entire city.

The United States Supreme Court has held that in order for the police to frisk someone they must have a reasonable belief that the person is armed and dangerous. Reasonable suspicion of a crime is not a legal justification for a policeman to frisk an individual.

People need to recognize that these activities are similar to those of the night riders. The only difference is that these individuals drive cars instead of horses and wear blue uniforms instead of white robes. This is not an indictment of individual police officers, but rather a system that continues to practice intimidation tactics that were used during slavery to control and keep the population enslaved.