Chris Dorner, ex-military, former LAPD, allegedly murdered several people including cops, then was tracked by the LAPD to a cabin in Lake Arrowhead where he was burned to death.
I don't support Dorner's acts in killing Americans. But if this incident is to be anything other than the public viewing of the hunting and burning to death of yet another black American man, we all should step back and try to look at the events which led up to this week's murder.
To begin, Dorner joined the military in 2002, apparently in response to the 9/11 attacks, presumably with the idea in mind that he wanted to defend his country. So what happened next? Go view his military records released by the military. He has two periods of service which have been blacked out, presumably classified, one for two years, combined with two medals for service in Iraq and in "The War Against Terror." What did our government teach this man to do? Murder. But also kidnap? Torture? Slaughter? Be brutal?
You see the photos of him with the enormous muscles on his arms, sleeves rolled up so everyone can see what a tough guy he was (steroids?). Lots of pictures of him with guns. I'd say he was trained to be a killer. And guess who embraced him? One of the most violenct police forces in the nation, the LAPD.
Beyond that, why this manhunt, why the $1.0 million reward? Was somebody worried that not only would Dorner expose the criminals inside the LAPD, but also reveal to the world what he did in the military, what he was trained to do by our government.
The murder of a cop is no worse than the murder of a civilian. The LAPD is notorious for killing civilians. The funeral of the one cop (sheriff?) this week was reportedly expecting 8000 people to attend, was televised, and was preceded by a miles-long parade of cop cars and cops, motorcycles and cops, and motorcycle "patriots" who love the violence of cops. And the funeral was televised live. I do not recall ever seeing the funeral of a victim murdered by the police in which police from all over the state insisted on attending to pay their respects to the victim.
Make no mistake: the Los Angeles police kill lots of civilians. "Killings by local police jump sharply: Officers and deputies in L.A. County fatally shot 54 people last year, nearly 70% more than the year before." L.A. Times article June 10, 2012; http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/10/local/la-me-cop-shootings-20120610).
54 people killed by the police in Los Angeles alone in 2011, while only 72 police officers were killed in the entire country in the same year. I'd say the cops are doing a lot more killing of civilians than vice versa. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57434161/72-police-killed-in-2011-in-u.s.-up-29-percent/
The worshipping of cops and military is just one of the unfortunate side-effects of our nation being committed to waging war against everyone, all the time. The chickens do come home to roost. The violence we commit against civilians in other nations will inevitably be committed against us.
When I saw hundreds of cops flooding into the area where this guy was supposedly holed up yesterday, standing with guns and rifles ready to kill him if he tried to escape (no question that's what they were going to do), watching the building burn, I was sickened. All the television stations carried it live.
I don't think anyone should be killed or be killing, and I don't see this guy as a hero. He strikes me as typical of the worship of guns and violence among the police and military. But nonetheless, he should have been given the chance to give himself up. There should have been police negotiators there to try to get him to give himself up. Like they did with the guy in Alabama who kidnapped the kid and murdered the bus driver -- they waited 8 days on him.
But for this L.A. cop, black, they decided to either burn him to death or shoot him down if he tried to escape. That's the way it looked to me, and it was pretty disgusting. Was race an element in how this played out? Without question.
We made this man. As long as he was slaughtering muslims in the middle east, our country threw him parades, mindlessly shouted out at him "Thank you for your service," put stickers on their cars saying "I support the troops [murdering Muslims in the middle east]." But when he used what we taught him here in the U.S., killed a few people, suddenly the nation is up in arms. A black man with a gun? Kill him, burn him to death.
You cannot look at this episode without realizing that we create monsters by our wars against everyone. We train men to be killers when we drop them into a nation of poor unarmed people and tell them that everyone is the enemy, because those people do not want us there, we are their enemy. When those trained killers come back home, what do we see?
20,000 U.S. military service women raped every year. Nobody's bothered to count the number of women in Iraq and Afghanistan who have been raped by Americans, but eventually we'll see their half-American children wandering the bombed out rubble we have left behind. One U.S. veteran commits suicide every 65 minutes in this country. Suicide is simply another form of homicide. And let's not pretend that racism is not an ongoing oppressive burden on all black people in this country, because it is, and the LAPD is notorious for its racism.
I don't support killing by anyone. But calling Dorner a coward or pretending he is not the product of the U.S. Military War On Terror and the LAPD misses the mark. We made him, he's our guy, we gave him a parade and cheered him for slaughtering Muslims, so we shouldn't act so self-righteous when he comes home and starts murdering Americans.
