COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
JULY 2, 2020
THIS IS A PDF WHICH WILL NOT COPY,
SO PLEASE GO TO THE BEAST AT THE SITE BELOW. IT IS THE FULL TEXT OF TOM
COTTON’S “SEND IN THE TROOPS” OP-ED WHICH CAUSED TOTAL CHAOS WITHIN THE NEW
YORK TIMES STAFF, AND ENGENDERED AVOWED CHANGES TO EDITORIAL POLICY. HOW
LONG WILL THAT LAST, I WONDER?
DO GO TO THE WEBSITE HERE TO READ GORENBURG’S
FINAL WORK. THE FINISHED RESULT IS PRESENTED
BELOW FROM DOCS.GOOGLE.COM FOR THOSE WHO WANT A COPY; BUT TO READ COTTON’S
ORIGINAL, WHICH IS INSTRUCTIVE FOR ELECTION TIME, SEE THE BEAST ARTICLE WITH
THE RED PENCILED CHANGES.
Opinion: I Fixed Tom Cotton’s Op-Ed
YOU’RE WELCOME
OPINION
Dmitry Gorenburg
Updated Jun. 04, 2020 7:36PM ET /
Published Jun. 04, 2020 3:27PM ET
Photo Illustration by The Daily
Beast/Photo Andrew Harnik/Getty
Graphic by Sarah Rogers/The Daily
Beast / Photo Alex Wong/Getty
Click here to read Dmitry
Gorenburg’s edit of Tom Cotton’s Op-Ed, with links.
FOR A PRINTABLE VERSION OF GORENBURG’S
FINISHED PRODUCT, GO TO DOCS.GOOGLE.COM. IT IS A WORK OF ART, AND FULL OF INFORMATION TO BOOT. ENJOY! I HAVE SINFULLY UNDERLINED SEVERAL PARTS IN THE LAST FEW PARAGRAPHS, PARTLY TO POINT UP INFORMATION, AND PARTLY AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR CHEERING OUT LOUD. I DON'T WANT TO DISTURB THE NEIGHBORS.
Disband the Police
By Dmitry Gorenburg
This week, police have plunged many
American cities into anarchy, recalling the widespread violence of the 1960s.
New York City suffered the worst of
the riots Monday night, as Mayor Bill de Blasio stood by while Midtown
Manhattan descended into lawlessness. Bands of officers roved the streets,
attacking hundreds of peaceful protesters. Some even drove exotic armored
vehicles; the riots were carnivals for thrill-seeking white supremacists as
well as other criminal elements working in police departments.
As usual, African-Americans,
encumbered by racist politicians, bore the brunt of the violence. In New York
State, police officers ran into protesters with cars on at least one occasion.
In San Francisco, a protester is dead after being shot five times by a police
officer while he was kneeling. In Louisville, a local business owner was killed
by police officers as they attempted to disperse a group of protesters; in a
separate incident, a 22-year-old man was shot to death by a bar owner as he
tried to stop the man from shooting into a crowd after an argument. The county
attorney refused to charge the shooter because he claimed self-defense.
Some elites have excused this orgy
of violence in the spirit of law and order, calling it an understandable
response to an orgy of violence and looting. Those excuses are built on a
revolting moral equivalence of state-sponsored agents of terror to law-abiding
agents of the peace. A majority who seek to protect society shouldn’t be
confused with bands of miscreants.
But the police violence has nothing
to do with George Floyd, whose bereaved relatives have condemned violence. On
the contrary, white supremacist police officers are simply out to suppress
legitimate expressions of grief and rage, with cadres of right-wing radicals
like boogaloo infiltrating protest marches to exploit Floyd’s death for their
own anarchic purposes.
These cops, if not subdued, not only
will destroy the livelihoods of law-abiding citizens but will also take more
innocent lives. Many poor communities that still bear scars from past police
riots will be set back still further.
One thing above all else will
restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of peaceful protest to
shame, resist, and ultimately deter lawbreaking cops. But local activists in
some cities desperately need backup, while delusional politicians in other
cities refuse to do what’s necessary to restrain the police.
The pace of police violence and
attacks on protesters may fluctuate from night to night, but it’s past time to
disband local police departments and replace them with community-based
policing. Some governors have mobilized the National Guard, who have generally
refrained from indiscriminate violence against peaceful protesters. Meanwhile,
authoritarian-minded politicians still advocate for the president to invoke the
Insurrection Act, which authorizes the president to employ the military “or any
other means” in “cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws.”
This venerable law, nearly as old as
our republic itself, doesn’t amount to “martial law” or the end of democracy,
as some excitable critics, ignorant of both the law and our history, have
comically suggested. In fact, the federal government has a constitutional duty
to the states to “protect each of them from domestic violence.” Throughout our
history, presidents have exercised this authority on dozens of occasions to
protect law-abiding citizens from disorder. In recent history, it has been used
most often to protect peaceful Americans from violent white supremacist cops
and politicians. In other cases it was used to support local authority, after
an explicit request by a state governor. It does not violate the Posse
Comitatus Act, which constrains the military’s role in law enforcement but
expressly excepts statutes such as the Insurrection Act.
For instance, during the 1950s and
1960s, Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson called out
the military when racist politicians and local law enforcement incited mobs
that prevented school desegregation or threatened innocent lives and property.
This happened in Tom Cotton’s own state, Arkansas. Gov. Orval Faubus, a racist
politician, mobilized the National Guard in 1957 to obstruct desegregation at
Little Rock Central High School. President Eisenhower federalized the Guard and
called in the 101st Airborne in response. The failure to do so, he said, “would
be tantamount to acquiescence in anarchy.”
More recently, President George H.W.
Bush ordered the Army’s Seventh Infantry and 1,500 Marines to protect the
status quo in Los Angeles during protests in response to another set of police
officers being allowed to get away with attempted murder after the beating of
Rodney King in 1992. He acknowledged his disgust at Rodney King’s treatment —
“what I saw made me sick” — but he knew mass protests might spiral out of
control and threaten the system of white privilege on which our country was
based.
Not surprisingly, public opinion is
on the side of the protesters, not the white supremacist cops and politicians. According
to a recent poll, 64 percent of American adults were “sympathetic to people who
are out protesting right now,” while 55 percent said they disapproved of
President’s Trump’s handling of the protests. Only 43 percent of respondents
believed that police were doing a good job, while 47 percent disagreed. That opinion may not appear often on Fox
News, but widespread opposition to police tactics is fact nonetheless.
The American people aren’t blind to
injustices in our society, but they know that the most basic responsibility of
government is to maintain public order and safety. Police describe their job as
maintaining public safety and defending law and order. But the evidence is
clear that throughout history police have actually served to defend the
property of the wealthy and powerful while oppressing the rest of the
population. In normal times, local communities can keep predatory cops at
bay. But in rare moments, like ours today, more is needed, even if many
politicians prefer to wring their hands while the police stoke the fires. The
answer is to defund and disband existing police departments and to replace them
with a community-based approach to protecting society that has a track record
of reducing both police violence and other crime. In the aftermath of the
death of George Floyd and the police riot that followed, Minneapolis is
considering this approach. Hopefully other cities will follow.
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