Fragments of the Future: The FTAA in Miami

Editor's Note: In an introduction to Solnit's article, Tom Engelhardt, editor of tomdispatch.com, comments on the growing militarization of our culture.

I used to think that, as with what Chalmers Johnson calls its "empire of bases," the United States was developing a new form of militarism, unlike every past example, in which you could walk the streets of our cities forever without seeing anyone in a military uniform. That, of course, began to change after 9/11. Now, from airports to subways, not to speak of demonstrations, it's become quite normal to spot well-armed soldiers. As Rebecca Solnit suggests in her vivid report below on the FTAA demonstrations in Miami, in the face of protest there's a creeping militarization of whole cityscapes. Along with that goes a version of the "bubble" effect of presidential visits abroad -- the shutting down of vast central city areas to protect our head of state. The two paradigmatic responses of our moment, in fact, seem to be "war" in metaphor and reality and this shutdown effect, which buttons up all life for "protection."

Just a day or two ago, Newsmax.com, evidently a conservative website, released quotes from an interview the magazine Cigar Aficionado was granted with former Centcom commander General Tommy Franks in which he speculated on what might happen after a nuclear, biological, or chemical attack on the United States:

"It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world - it may be in the United States of America - that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important."

Comments the website: "He is the first high-ranking official to openly speculate that the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government." It's interesting, of course, that such extreme scenarios are running around the brain of the general who oversaw our war in Iraq. At a more mundane level, another kind of militarization of our society is taking place as the Pentagon moves slowly on a host of fronts to blur the lines between civilian and military. With its mountainous $400 billion budget, of course, it is competing to become the agency of choice for just about everything -- from war to peace, foreign intelligence to domestic surveillance.

On Sunday, William M. Arkin, the sober military analyst for the Los Angeles Times began an important piece, Mission Creep Hits Home, this way:

"Preoccupied with the war in Iraq and still traumatized by Sept. 11, 2001, the American public has paid little attention to some of what is being done inside the United States in the name of anti-terrorism. Under the banner of 'homeland security,' the military and intelligence communities are implementing far-reaching changes that blur the lines between terrorism and other kinds of crises and will break down long-established barriers to military action and surveillance within the U.S.

"'We must start thinking differently,' says Air Force Gen. Ralph E. 'Ed' Eberhart, the newly installed commander of Northern Command, the military's homeland security arm. Before 9/11, he says, the military and intelligence systems were focused on 'the away game' and not properly focused on 'the home game.' 'Home,' of course, is the United States."

The military, it turns out, is heading into the domestic counterintelligence business and into -- welcome home, John Poindexter -- the "data mining" business as well (that is, information about you). Arkin comments: "And it doesn't seem far-fetched to imagine that those charged with assembling 'actionable intelligence' will slowly start combining databases of known terrorists with seemingly innocuous lists of contributors to charities or causes, that membership lists for activist organizations will be folded in, that names and personal data of anti-globalization protesters will be run through the 'data mine.'"