Posted on May 29, 2018

Mr. President, Please Send the Troops to Chicago

Jason D. Hill, The Hill, May 24, 2018

President Trump, during your presidential campaign you made a promise to send federal troops to drain the swamp in Washington, D.C., and also one festering with feral thugs and gang-bangers who are committing genocide among black Americans right in the great city of Chicago.

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Something is terribly wrong when, in the most moral nation on earth, its third-largest city is ruled by gangs with a crime rate that is 35 percent higher than the national average.

Wannabe-commandos terrorize neighborhoods, challenging not only local authorities but the very authority you exercise as president of this great nation. The potency of your own presidency is ridiculed when thugs and barbaric criminals take it upon themselves to establish lawless fiefdoms, usurping the law and order on which this republic was built and upon which its continued existence depends, as they kill innocent lives.

I implore you to use your powers to suspend the dated Posse Comitatus Act, which unfairly limits your ability to use domestic militarization to respond to crises, and send in the resources necessary to stem the violence overrunning Chicago. {snip}

I am a black college professor who came to this country as a legal immigrant from Jamaica 32 years ago with $120 in my pocket. {snip}

When I came to this country I promised that, in the name of the best within me, I would cultivate the American virtues of individualism and personal excellence and take advantage of the opportunities that lay before me. {snip}

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{snip} In Chicago, some neighborhoods are overseen by gangs that ought to be viewed as operators of terror cells, nihilistic institutional organizations that invade the sphere of civilized life. These gangs have declared themselves above the law.

Our city is under siege. It is bleeding to death by thousands of tiny scratches. In this age of nihilism, the American Dream is being executed day by day by the genocidal warfare against black and brown bodies by other back and brown bodies. {snip} One cannot reason with nihilists; one must eradicate the nihilists to protect the victims and inoculate the innocent.

So again, I ask that you use your powers to suspend the dated Posse Comitatus Act, which unfairly limits your ability to use domestic militarization to respond to crises. Posse Comitatus makes no mention of the use of the militia, the National Guard, the Navy or the Marines. You can suspend this law and send in the forces necessary to quiet our streets and restore safety to at-risk neighborhoods.

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Unleash those troops not to instill fear, but as the insignia of urban civility and order. Do it not just to save black and Hispanic lives. Do it because it is the moral thing to do. All lives matter. You are in a position to save them.

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