The Counterrevolution

by Bernard E. Harcourt

  23. Richard C. Paddock, “Becoming Duterte: The Making of a Philippine Strongman,” New York Times, March 21, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/world/asia/rodrigo-duterte-philippines-president-strongman.html.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Alleg, The Question, 81–82.

  26. Ibid., 82.

  27. Marnia Lazreg, “Women: Between Torture and Military Feminism,” Torture and the Twilight of Empire, 145–169.

  28. Alleg, The Question, 68 and 85.

  29. Ibid., 93.

  30. Ibid.

  31. Jean-Paul Sartre, preface to The Question, by Henri Alleg, xxxi and xliii.

  32. Alleg, The Question, 96.

  33. Ibid. (emphasis added).

  34. Sartre, preface to The Question, xliii.

  35. Lazreg, Torture and the Twilight of Empire, 155.

  36. Ibid., 268.

  37. James Baldwin, “Here Be Dragons or Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood” (1985), reprinted in Rudolph P. Byrd and Beverly Guy-Sheftall, eds., Traps: African American Men on Gender and Sexuality (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 212.

  38. Ibid., 208.

  39. Jean-Paul Sartre, preface to The Wretched of the Earth, by Franz Fanon, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2004), 36.

  40. Cf. Moustafa Bayoumi, This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror (New York: New York University Press, 2015), which traces the history of the racialization of Islam since the late nineteenth century in America.

  41. Agamben, Homo Sacer, 114 and 154.

  42. Ibid. 184–185 and 185.

  43. Ibid., 8.

  44. This is not to deny, in any way, the rich human lives that resist this bare life. While Agamben is surely right that the camp functions to dehumanize, it is important for us never to stop seeing and writing about the complexity of the lived experience and will to life in these situations. When we speak of “bare life,” we almost inhabit the worldview of the Nazi leadership or the prison warden. But the concept of “bare life” always does injustice to the humanity of the victim. That may be its function, though ours is to resist. As an ethical matter, it is urgent that we resist the nudity of bare life. In other words, it is essential never to treat life ever as mere existence and instead, to always seek to find, in that nudity, the complexity of life. See, e.g., Banu Bargu, Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).

  45. Adriana Cavarero, Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). With more time and space, it would of course be crucial to develop the contributions of, among others, Allen Feldman, Archives of the Insensible: Of War, Photopolitics, and Dead Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015); Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” Public Culture 15 (2003): 11–40; Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982); Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); and Alexander G. Weheliye, Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), who have all contributed importantly to these debates.

  46. See Michel Foucault, Théories et institutions pénales. Cours au Collège de France. 1971–1972 (Paris: Gallimard/Le Seuil, 2015).

  47. Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (New York: Pantheon Books, 2016).

  48. Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith (London: Verso, 1991), 43; see also Sartre, preface to The Wretched of the Earth; and Wolin, The Wind from the East.

  49. Dostoevsky, “The Grand Inquisitor.”

  PART III : THE DOMESTICATION OF COUNTERINSURGENCY

  1. For background on Anwar al-Awlaki, see Scott Shane, “The Lessons of Anwar al-Awlaki,” New York Times, August 27, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/magazine/the-lessons-of-anwar-al-awlaki.html; Adam Taylor, “The US Keeps Killing Americans in Drone Strikes, Mostly by Accident,” Washington Post, April 23, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/04/23/the-u-s-keeps-killing-americans-in-drone-strikes-mostly-by-accident/; and Michael Boyle and Hina Shamsi, “Killing Americans Abroad: Is the Obama Administration Justified?”, Al Jazeera America, June 24, 2014, http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/inside-story/articles/2014/6/24/drones-memo-releasewastheobamaadministrationjustified.html.

  2. Memorandum from David J. Barron to the attorney general, US Department of Justice, July 16, 2010, https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/2014-06-23_barron-memorandum.pdf; and Spencer Ackerman, “US Cited Controversial Law in Decision to Kill American Citizen by Drone,” Guardian, June 23, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/23/us-justification-drone-killing-american-citizen-awlaki.

  3. Jonathan Masters, “Targeted Killings,” Council of Foreign Relations, updated May 23, 2013, http://www.cfr.org/counterterrorism/targeted-killings/p9627. The ACLU filed two lawsuits challenging the drone killings of al-Awlaki. The first was dismissed because the federal district court held that the plaintiff lacked standing and the case raised political questions. The second was dismissed because the federal district court held that there was no implied right of action for the plaintiff to bring a Bivens claim. See Al Aulaqi v. Panetta, Center for Constitutional Rights, June 29, 2015, https://ccrjustice.org/home/what-we-do/our-cases/al-aulaqi-v-panetta; and “Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta—Constitutional Challenge to Killings of Three US Citizens,” ACLU, June 4, 2014, https://www.aclu.org/cases/al-aulaqi-v-panetta-constitutional-challenge-killing-three-us-citizens. The ACLU and the New York Times also filed suits to force the government to release documents containing the legal justifications for al-Awlaki’s killing, resulting in the release of the July 16, 2010, memorandum. See Devlin Barrett and Siobhan Gorman, “US Memo Outlines Rationale for Drone Strikes on Citizens,” Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2014, http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-can-kill-citizens-abroad-under-certain-circumstances-memo-says-1403542004. For reactions to rationale, see Ackerman, “US Cited Controversial Law”; and interview of David Sedney in Boyle and Shamsi, “Killing Americans Abroad: Is the Obama Administration Justified?,” Al Jazeera America, June 24, 2014, http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/inside-story/articles/2014/6/24/drones-memo-releasewastheobamaadministrationjustified.html.

  4. Masters, “Targeted Killings.”

  5. As per the Bureau of Investigative Journalism on April 23, 2015, see Woods and Serle, “Hostage Deaths Mean”; and Adam Taylor, “The US Keeps Killing Americans.”

  6. Adam Baron, “US Drone Strikes Came Despite Yemen’s Hopes to Limit Them,” April 24, 2014, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/middle-east/article24766561.html; Taylor, “The US Keeps Killing Americans”; Craig Whitlock et al., “Obama Apologizes for Attack That Killed Two Hostages,” Washington Post, April 23, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-operation-kills-al-qaeda-hostages-including-american/2015/04/23/8e9fcaba-e9bd-11e4-aae1-d642717d8afa_story.html; and Mark Mazzetti, “Killing of Americans Deepens Debate Over Use of Drone Strikes Abroad,” New York Times, April 23, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/world/asia/killing-of-americans-deepens-debate-over-proper-use-of-drone-strikes.html.

  7. Sewell Chan and Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, “Pentagon Says ‘Jihadi John’ Was Probably Killed in Airstrike,” New York Times, November 13, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/14/world/europe/jihadi-john-mohammed-emwazi-david-cameron-statement.html; Adam Goldman et al., “US Strike Believed to Have Killed ‘Jihadi John,’ Islamic State Executioner,” Washington Post, November 13, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-drone-strike-targeted-jihadi-john-the-briton-linked-to-hostage-beheadings/2015/11/13/8d58595c-89df-11e5-be39-0034bb576eee_story.html; and Prime Minister David Cameron, as quoted in Chan and de Freytas-Tamura, “Pentagon Says.”

  8. Nash Jenkins, “German Rapper Who Joined ISIS Killed in US Air Strik
e in Syria,” Time, October 30, 2015, http://time.com/4093945/denis-cuspert-deso-dogg-isis/; Christine Hauser, “Pentagon Says Deso Dogg, Ex-Rapper and ISIS Recruiter, Survived Airstrike After All,” New York Times, August 3, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/world/pentagon-says-isis-recruiter-survived-airstrike-in-2015-after-all.html; and Terrorist Designation of Denis Cuspert, US Department of State, February 9, 2015, https://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/266538.htm.

  9. See Woods and Serle, “Hostage Deaths Mean.”

  7. COUNTERINSURGENCY COMES HOME

  1. Sewell Chan, “Shootings in Dallas, Minnesota and Baton Rouge: What We Know,” New York Times, July 8, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/us/dallas-attacks-what-we-know-baton-rouge-minnesota.html; and Henry Fountain and Michael S. Schmidt, “‘Bomb Robot’ Takes Down Dallas Gunman, but Raises Enforcement Questions,” New York Times, July 8, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/science/dallas-bomb-robot.html.

  2. Noah Feldman, “Crime Scenes and Weapons of War,” Bloomberg View, July 11, 2016, http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-07-11/crime-scenes-and-weapons-of-war.

  3. Ibid.

  4. One can get a good sense of this by reading the contributions to Life During Wartime: Resisting Counterinsurgency, eds. Kristian Williams, Will Munger, and Lara Messersmith-Glavin (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2013), which addresses the domestication of counterinsurgency.

  5. Niraj Chokshi, “Militarized Police in Ferguson Unsettles Some; Pentagon Gives Cities Equipment,” Washington Post, August 14, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/militarized-police-in-ferguson-unsettles-some-pentagon-gives-cities-equipment/2014/08/14/4651f670-2401-11e4-86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html.

  6. Matt Apuzzo, “War Gear Flows to Police Departments,” New York Times, June 8, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-police-departments.html; “MRAPs And Bayonets: What We Know About The Pentagon’s 1033 Program,” NPR, September 2, 2014, www.npr.org/2014/09/02/342494225/mraps-and-bayonets-what-we-know-about-the-pentagons-1033-program; and Shane Bauer, “The Making of the Warrior Cop,” Mother Jones, October 2014, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/swat-warrior-cops-police-militarization-urban-shield.

  7. “Obama Administration Military Surplus Review,” Congressional Digest 94, no. 2 (February 2015): 4. MAS Ultra—School Edition, EBSCOhost, accessed May 12, 2017.

  8. Radley Balko, Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces (New York: Public Affairs, 2013), 333.

  9. Chokshi, “Militarized Police.”

  10. Alex Horton, “In Iraq, I Raided Insurgents. In Virginia, the Police Raided Me,” Washington Post, July 24, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-iraq-i-raided-insurgents-in-virginia-the-police-raided-me/2015/07/24/2e114e54-2b02-11e5-bd33-395c05608059_story.html.

  11. See Urbandictionary.com, top definition of swatting.

  12. Jason Fagone, “The Serial Swatter: Internet Trolls Have Learned to Exploit Our Over-Militarized Police,” New York Times, November 24, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/magazine/the-serial-swatter.html.

  13. NPR, “North Dakota Legalizes Armed Police Drones,” August 27, 2015, http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/08/27/435301160/north-dakota-legalizes-armed-police-drones; and Police Foundation, “New Publication—Community Policing & Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS): Guidelines to Enhance Community Trust,” https://www.policefoundation.org/new-publication-community-policing-unmanned-aircraft-systems-uas-guidelines-to-enhance-community-trust/.

  14. Redditt Hudson, “I’m a Black Ex-Cop, and This Is the Real Truth About Race and Policing,” Vox, July 7, 2016, http://www.vox.com/2015/5/28/8661977/race-police-officer.

  15. Jack Maple and Chris Mitchell, The Crime Fighter: Putting the Bad Guys Out of Business (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 31, 7.

  16. J. Edgar Hoover memo, August 25, 1967, quoted in Bloom and Martin, Black Against Empire, 201. Although the “COIN” in the neologism COINTELPRO was not literally intended to mean “counterinsurgency,” the family resemblance was striking. For a discussion of some of the similarities, see Walidah Imarisha and Kristian Williams, “COINTELPRO TO COIN: Claude Marks Interviewed,” in Life During Wartime, 27–43.

  17. Hoover expressly viewed the Panthers as insurgents. He perceived them through the lens of the armed anticolonial revolutionary movements. And in fact, some members of the Panthers were in fact Maoist and did support revolutionary liberation movements in Africa and Asia. When Eldridge Cleaver fled the United States to Algeria in 1968 and inaugurated the international section of the Black Panther Party, Cleaver would align the international section with the liberation movements in Algeria, North Korea, North Vietnam, and China. But what matters here is not so much their politics, as the fact that Hoover perceived the Panthers as insurgents—identifying them with the liberation movements around the globe. In fact, Hoover viewed the Panthers as, in his own words, “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” Bloom and Martin, Black Against Empire, 3; and Wolin, The Wind from the East, 14.

  18. J. Edgar Hoover memo, March 1968, quoted in Bloom and Martin, Black Against Empire, 202. It was particularly important to the FBI to discredit the Panthers, given the popularity of the Panthers’ social programs, such as the Free Breakfast for Children program—programs intended to serve the communities and inspired, in part, by Maoist ideals and strategies.

  19. Frank Trippett, “It Looks Just Like a War Zone,” Time, June 24, 2001, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,141842,00.html.

  20. Charles F. Sabel and William H. Simon, “The Duty of Responsible Administration and the Problem of Police Accountability” (working paper in author’s possession, September 22, 2015).

  21. Bernard E. Harcourt, Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken-Windows Policing (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2001).

  22. Ibid.; Sabel and Simon, “The Duty,” 27–28.

  23. Maple and Mitchell, The Crime Fighter, 31.

  24. Sabel and Simon, “The Duty,” 28.

  25. For all these references, see Maple and Mitchell, The Crime Fighter, 31, 79, 135–138, 144, 178, 222, and 242.

  26. Ibid., 31.

  27. Sabel and Simon, “The Duty,” 33, 36, and 40. Problem-oriented policing is closely associated with the Wisconsin law professor Herman Goldstein, who spelled out the principles of his approach in a book, Problem-Oriented Policing (New York: McGraw Hill, 1990).

  28. Sabel and Simon, “The Duty,” 41.

  29. Heather Mac Donald, “The New Nationwide Crime Wave,” Wall Street Journal, May 29, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-nationwide-crime-wave-1432938425.

  30. Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database; and Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2016/.

  31. Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).

  32. National Weed and Seed Program, US Department of Justice, https://www.ojjdp.gov/pubs/gun_violence/sect08-e.html.

  8. SURVEILLING AMERICANS

  1. FM, 79.

  2. Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 72.

  3. Apuzzo and Goldman, “With CIA Help”; “Highlights of AP’s Pulitzer Prize–winning probe into NYPD intelligence operations,” Associated Press (with links to stories and documents), https://www.ap.org/about/awards-and-recognition/highlights-of-aps-pulitzer-prize-winning-probe-into-nypd-intelligence-operations; and Ryan Devereaux, “Judge Who Approved Expanding NYPD Surveillance of Muslims Now Wants More Oversight,” The Intercept, November 7, 2016, https://theintercept.com/2016/11/07/judge-who-approved-expanding-nypd-surveillance-of-muslims-now-wants-more-oversight.

  4. “Target of Surveillance,” https://www.ap.org/about/awards-and-recognition/highlights-of-aps-pulitzer-prize-winning-probe-into-nypd-intelligence-operations.

  5. “Nov. 22, 2006 NYPD Weekly M
SA Report,” https://www.ap.org/about/awards-and-recognition/highlights-of-aps-pulitzer-prize-winning-probe-into-nypd-intelligence-operations.

  6. “April 25, 2008 Deputy Commissioner’s Briefing,” https://www.ap.org/about/awards-and-recognition/highlights-of-aps-pulitzer-prize-winning-probe-into-nypd-intelligence-operations.

  7. “April 25, 2008 Deputy Commissioner’s Briefing,” https://www.ap.org/about/awards-and-recognition/highlights-of-aps-pulitzer-prize-winning-probe-into-nypd-intelligence-operations.

  8. “Sept. 25, 2007 Newark, N.J. Demographics Report,” 48 and 50, https://www.ap.org/about/awards-and-recognition/highlights-of-aps-pulitzer-prize-winning-probe-into-nypd-intelligence-operations.

  9. Apuzzo and Goldman, “With CIA Help.”

  10. DOI’s Inspector General for NYPD, “An Investigation.”

  11. See Handschu v. NYPD, case no. 1:71-cv-02203-CSH-SCS, “Ruling on Proposed Settlement Agreement,” document 465 filed October 28, 2016 (opinion tracing history of Handschu and Raza litigation), https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/raza-v-new-york-handschu-court-ruling-proposed-revisions-handschu-guidelines; and “Raza v. City of New York—Legal Challenge to NYPD Muslim Surveillance Program,” ACLU, March 6, 2017, https://www.aclu.org/cases/raza-v-city-new-york-legal-challenge-nypd-muslim-surveillance-program.

  12. See Mark Hensch, “Trump Won’t Rule Out Database, Special ID for Muslims in US,” The Hill, November 19, 2015, http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/260727-trump-wont-rule-out-database-special-id-for-muslims; and Dean Obeidallah, “Donald Trump’s Horrifying Words About Muslims,” CNN, November 21, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/20/opinions/obeidallah-trump-anti-muslim/.

  13. Hensch, “Trump Won’t Rule.”

  14. “The US Attorney’s Letter,” CNN, November 27, 2001, http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/11/27/inv.questioning.letters/; see generally “Hundreds in Michigan Asked to Submit to ‘Terror Questioning,’” CNN, November 28, 2001, http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/11/27/inv.michigan.interviews/index.html; Mitch Frank, “Feds and Cops at Odds over Terror Investigation,” Time, November 29, 2001, http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,186383,00.html; and Jodi Wilgorennov, “A Nation Challenged: The Interviews; Michigan ‘Invites’ Men From Mideast to Be Interviewed,” New York Times, November 27, 2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/us/nation-challenged-interviews-michigan-invites-men-mideast-be-interviewed.html.