If the street scenes during the protests in Portland, Oregon, were familiar to you this week, it’s because you’ve seen them before … in Iraq.
Heavily armed troops in camouflage clothing with helmets and tactical vests moving through a community like an occupying army? Check.
Hostile civilians gathered on the street in protest of the occupying army? Check.
Complete lack of knowledge about the civilian population by the occupation army, whose members are not from the area and are temporarily assigned? Check.
Are there no lines of communication between the two sides? Check.
Random civilians grabbed the street and walked away to where God knows where without probable cause or criminal charges? Check.
Stagnant situation on the ground that does not improve no matter how many troops move and how many civilians are seized from the street? Check.
Occupying army operating under orders from distant commanders far from the action, who have limited information on the scene and have no local authority. Check.
Is everything deteriorating in a quagmire from which neither side will back down? Check.
It’s so eerily similar, the old quote from then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld comes to mind: “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want or want to have at another time,” he told a group of soldiers complaining about the casual manner of their assignment to Iraq and their lack of adequate equipment.
That is precisely Trump’s problem, isn’t it? He has been unable to “go to war” with the army he wants against the Black Lives Matter protesters, because his true army has refused to take the battlefield. Remember? That happened after Trump used some National Guard troops under federal control to clear protesters near Lafayette Park for his disastrous photo shoot with a borrowed Bible outside St. John’s Church on June 1. It turned out that Trump somehow caught the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, to accompany him.
But soon after, Milley and other military commanders reacted forcefully and negatively to Trump’s use of active duty soldiers against peaceful protesters. By the end of the week, all regular Army soldiers had been sent home from their temporary assignments to Washington, and military leaders had drawn a line in the arena that they would not cross. Without threatening to disobey the commander-in-chief’s orders, military leaders made it clear that they would not facilitate Trump’s militarization of his response to protesters across the country.
Trump wanted a show of force against protesters who had taken to the streets to show their support for Black Lives Matter. Protesters were in the streets by the thousands to protest the murder of George Floyd, as well as other murders and the use of force against black Americans by the police. Trump took advantage of the spreading riots to launch a new push for “law and order” in an effort to boost his flabby reelection campaign.
But where? And how? At first, it looked like Trump would order the streets in downtown Seattle to be cleared, during the period they were occupied by protesters, but Seattle took care of that with its own police officers. So he focused his attention on the Portland uprisings that had been going on every night since late May against the murder of Floyd and the death of Jason Washington, a Portland resident killed by police in 2018.
Trump was unable to order at the 82nd Airborne Division. He tried it in Washington and failed. He then ordered William Barr, his attorney general, and Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, to improvise a home militia using Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, the Transportation and Customs and Border Protection Administration. These are civilian compliance officers trained to patrol the borders with Mexico and Canada, check travelers at airports for contraband in their luggage, and inspect shipments of imported products that cross our borders from foreign countries.
How do you create an intimidating army out of a group of officials whose previous law enforcement experience has been locking up young children and their mothers along the border and searching street vendors at airports for bottles containing more three ounces of shampoo?
Cover them with a lot of camouflage, of course. Give them a quote and drop them online to visit sites like TacticalGear.com where you can shop for everything from a Condor Tri-Fold Magnetic Recovery Bag to Taco Kydex High Speed Handcuff Bags and Advanced Tactical Elbow Pads Blackhawk Highstorm V2 to a Condor Open Top M4 Magnetic Pouch to a Safariland Quick Release Leg Strap SLS Tactical Thigh Holster to a Hazard 4 Small ID Window Patch.
No, on second thought, forget the Hazard 4 Small ID Window Patch. You won’t need that particular piece of camouflage tactical gear because it won’t show any ID at all.
The unnamed, unnamed Trumpian shock troops appear to have been assembled in a standard parts container. It is lame “law and order”, made at a low price. And that’s the problem with militias urges like the one deployed in Portland and the ones planned for Chicago, Albuquerque and other metropolitan areas of the country with mayors who are Democrats. How intimidating can a mock army be if you wear patches that say “Transportation Security Administration”? What are the protesters going to do? Raise your arms and yell, “I give up! I forgot and packed my nail clippers!”
The camouflages sent by Barr and Wolf to terrorize protesters in Portland are using tear gas, “non-lethal” riot control weapons and paintball guns that shoot pepper balls. Some photos from the Portland scene clearly show these government militias armed with M4 rifles and carrying 9mm pistols in leg holsters, but there have been no reports of lethal ammunition used against protesters. Still.
Protesters have been wearing bicycle helmets, goggles, face shields, and heavy clothing, including some tactical vests they likely purchased from the same vendors that the militarized government thugs wear.
Recently, protesters in Portland have had some success against government militias by putting together a “Mommy Wall” with interlocking weapons against government armed troops. When tear gas was used against the mothers, the fathers began to appear armed with leaf blowers to dissipate the tear gas from the protesters. They are the same tactics used by the Yippies in Chicago in 1968 when they appeared at the Democratic National Convention and announced that they would execute a 145-pound pig named Pigasus for president.
Sometimes confronting force with humor is the best tactic. Moms in yellow shirts and dads with leaf blowers are the perfect way to portray Trump as a pitiful helpless giant. His movements to bring fascism to the streets of the United States are working, as are his attempts to desire the virus that is ravaging the country in a silent riot of disease and death.
Donald Trump is a fascist toy. This time we don’t need the Yippies to have a pig for president. The Republican Party is doing that for us.
