Imagine you are suddenly bum rushed by a pack of US police. Not just any police, but elite, scary, federal police, like FBI, DEA, Air Marshals, or Secret Service. You're an important dude, though, and you've got places to go, things to do, &c., &c. So what you do is, you yell "You're not stopping me! You're not stopping me! I'm with the president!," and you argue and attempt to fight your way through the pack of police blocking your way, so you can go about your very important business. Right?
No, that's not what you do, because not only would you be dealt with like the Indiana Pacers deal with unruly Detroit fans, but if you survived, all of your broken bones, bruises, cuts, scrapes, wounds, and critical internal injuries would be said to be your own fault, leaving you with a five hundred thousand dollar plus hospital bill. Moreover, in addition to whatever matter you were initially detained over, now you'd be facing a slew of additional charges: resisting arrest, assault on a peace officer, battery, interfering with police performance of lawful duties, plus whatever else the cops thought up depending on how much they disliked you – And rest assured, US police are intimately familiar with the additional charges they can levy against uncooperative detainees, because their own police unions draft and lobby for those particular laws, both at the federal and state level. Basically, the US Attorney would run out of ink trying to print out your charge sheet, and you would be facing charges carrying maximum prison sentences, if served consecutively, of several hundred years, which is not a very strong position from which to begin plea negotiations.
My point is, US citizens just can't afford to pick fights with the federal thugs who lord it over us – and, come to think of it, who lord it over the whole world. I seem to recall recently reading about there being an FBI office in Prague. What does that tell you about the limits that the imperial US government recognizes on its jurisdiction?
This is why I find it so eminently satisfying to see the proud Carabineros of Chile's state security service standing up to the imperial feds at the Asia-Pacific economic summit in Santiago. Apparently, Bush and his bodyguards picked a fight with the Chileans when they broke an agreement that only one bodyguard per leader would enter through the main entrance at an official dinner. As Bush entered the formal dinner on Saturday night, escorted by his entire SS security detail, offended Chilean officers stepped in front of Bush's bodyguards, initiating a mêlée. In videotape of the incident, Nick Trotta, one of "Bush's gorillas," as the Chilean press referred to the American security detail, can be heard yelling "You're not stopping me! You're not stopping me! I'm with the president!" Bush returned to the scene of the shoving match to rescue his agent, whereupon the Carabineros backed down.
The Chileans, moreover, were doubtless responding to cumulative US provocations of the whole week, including outrageous demands by US Secret Service agents that they control the president's immediate space even while on Chile's sovereign turf, and further demands that Chilean President Ricardo Lagos' guests pass through Secret Service metal detectors to be set up for Bush's security before attending an elaborate state dinner with leading Chilean citizens, that was to be held in Bush's honor. Instead of dropping the demand, Bush and his security agents allowed the event to be canceled.
What intolerably rude, arrogant, disgusting behavior! The fault is doubly compounded by the feeble attempt by the White House to portray, for the consumption of Bush's ignorant red state constituency, 90% of whom surely couldn't locate Chile on a map, the president's intervention in the scuffle he provoked as the act of real American tough guy facing down strange, foreign looking cops.
What a sick way to score puny PR points. Oh yeah, George W. Bush, real brave! If Bush was so tough, why didn't he intervene to drop the demands of his bodyguards for a metal detector at the state dinner? What's he afraid of? That the Chilean aristocrats have joined Al Qaeda? That Chilean plutocrats are going to assassinate him? Ridiculous! What a fool! It's a stunning embarrassment to the US to have this crude, crass little man as our president.
(Come to think of it, what's going on with Bush's much touted Spanish fluency? – I saw no report from the summit mentioning any spontaneous exchanges conducted in Spanish by our Ivy League "educated" president.)
US federal police are so arrogant and stupid at the same time, they even yell at the Chilean Carabineros in English: "You're not stopping me! You're not stopping me!" How could any American abroad, federal cop or otherwise, behave so crudely, yelling English into Spanish speaking foreign police officers' faces while resisting their authority and trampling on their sovereignty?
What does that even mean, "You're not stopping me!"? It sounds like some kind of pro sports trash talk, like something you'd expect to hear from a gangsta athlete like Keyshawn Johnson or Warren Sapp. What I suppose it means is, I'm a fed, and nobody ever crosses, me no matter what, no matter where, ever.
As Chilean Interior Minister Jose Miguel Insulza said on Monday, while recognizing the U.S.'s heightened security issues are different from Chile's (because of our egregious foreign policy), "in Chile we are the ones in charge." Exactly right!
A US citizen could never get away with an insult directed personally at the feds, never mind physically confront them. But note to feds: Chile is not a conquered US state, it's a sovereign country. – And as for Bush's supposedly bold rescue of his bodyguard from the fray (one of his weasley DC spinners, PR secretary Scott McClellan claimed it showed how Bush is "a hands-on kind of guy") one would suppose that Bush has been desperately seeking an opportunity to show what a man of action he is, but everyone knows what this newfound, protocol be damned, risk free courage is worth. Bush's courage in the face of real danger was tested on Sept. 11, 2001, and, after he was allowed to finish "My Pet Goat," he flew to a nuke bunker in Nebraska, just like the military industrial complex ordered him to.
What a phony.
Russ Stein is a paralegal in Boston.
11.26.04 Copyright © 2004 LewRockwell.com
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