Crimes of the State

 

Two words help explain a whole host of social problems in our society - crime, poverty, inequality, pollution, racism, sexism, child abuse, etc.  These words are: power and control. What this means is that most of our problems stem from the attempts of a person, group, class or nation to maintain power and control over another person, group, class or nation. The term power generally refers to the Aability to impose one=s will on others.@  This applies to the rapist as well as to the head of a corporation or a nation like the United States.  Control refers to attempts to Adominate,@ Acommand,@ the keep in check, regulate.

When it comes to the problem of crime, power and control come into play in many different situations.  One of the most important general rules can be stated as follows: the imposition of the label Acrime@ or Acriminal@ is an exercise in power.  Thus, those with the most power are most likely to successfully resist.  Moreover, the very definition of what constitutes a Acrime@ is also an exercise in power: those with the most power are least likely to have their behaviors labeled as Acriminal.@

One of the best illustrations of these general principles can be seen when we consider what can be defined as state crime - offenses committed by governments and/or their agents.  To give a hypothetical illustration, take the following scenario.  If someone was to supply guns, give expert advice and perhaps even some training to someone else who was planning a major crime, such as murder or bank robbery, that person would be subject to arrest and prosecution as an "accessory to crime."  If someone was killed, he would most certainly be charged with "accessory to murder."

Now suppose the United States government supplied a foreign country with millions of dollars worth of arms, plus provided expert advice and training and the "client" country subsequently commenced to engage in the attack of harmless and defenseless citizens of its own country, resulting in the death of several thousand.  Would anyone dare to charge our government with "accessory to murder"?  Of course not. 

What is the difference?  Among other variables, the mere fact that the United States government is the most powerful country ("gang"?) on earth, certainly helps explain the difference.  But more generally, there is a broader principle at work here: those who are in positions of power are generally above the law.  They can literally get away with murder.  In the case of the United States supplying foreign countries with arms and advice, we have a situation, documented in literally dozens of cases over the years, where petty dictators and their goon squads were "making the world safe for democracy" by putting down if not eliminating "communists" or other "trouble makers."  This is the usual explanation for why our government has done this so often.

The translation goes as follows:  residents of these foreign countries, in an attempt to control and benefit from their own natural resources and achieve a decent standard of living, and subsequently electing a democratic form of government, ran into conflict with American corporations and their investors who believed that they should be able to extract the resources of this country for their own profits.  When the people naturally starting resisting, these corporations hired their own police (the U.S. government in the form of either the military or the CIA or both, and the army of a military dictator in this country) to bring "peace" and "law and order."  Many of course would be killed, but this was merely a "casualty of war."  Following this conquest, those who continued to protest were tortured (perhaps with the training in "counter-insurgency" by United States military advisors, who learned much from previous terrorist regimes, like Hitler) or perhaps even killed.