Bringing the military to the streets
Posted on August 2nd, 2008 by bile Tags: 4th Amendment, criminals, John McCain, law enforcement, murder, national urban league, New York, New York City, Rudy Giuliani, urban crime, war in iraq, War on DrugsToday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) spoke to the National Urban League, a group “devoted to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream.” When an audience member asked him how he planned to reduce urban crime, McCain praised Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s efforts in New York Cirty before invoking the military’s tactics in Iraq as the model for crime-fighting:
MCCAIN: And some of those tactics — you mention the war in Iraq — are like that we use in the military. You go into neighborhoods, you clamp down, you provide a secure environment for the people that live there, and you make sure that the known criminals are kept under control. And you provide them with a stable environment and then they cooperate with law enforcement, etc, etc.
What was it I heard last week about McCain? “I hate war” I believe it was. Just like he loves the 1st and 4th Amendment right?
2 Responses to “Bringing the military to the streets”
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August 2nd, 2008 at 12:45 pm
I think that type of action may work when the crimes you are dealing with are blatant armed robbery or murder. If you have a state of lawlessness in which people are wandering around shooting other people for the fun of it, a soldier on every street corned who is equipped to respond with deadly force may help that. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live there because I’m a little averse to bullets flying around everywhere, but I’m not going to deny that it won’t have an impact.
The problem I think most people who’ll read this have with a soldier on every corner is when they get bored and start looking for other reasons to bust people. If the soldiers really were just there for your protection and weren’t interfering in your daily affairs unless you were presenting a clear and present danger to someone else or vice-versa, I think it could work.
Finally you’ve also got to pay those soldiers some how. That’s a tough one, unless the people like the protection so much that they donate to the cause.
August 2nd, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Of course a heavy military presents will likely subdue violent crime. However, he is talking about dealing with a symptom instead of the true problem. Welfare, drug war, minimum wage laws, government schooling, etc. It’s like looking at the surge in Iraq as a solution to the violence… the violence caused by the government’s invasion. There is an obvious shortsightedness in that type of answer. The first thing one should think of when solving this type of problem is why it occurred.