Weekly Shredder 51:
American Insurgency
by Taylor Carik
US military personnel recently undertook combat operations to restore order and provide security in an urban area rife with violence.
But the mission wasn't in a Middle Eastern hotbed of anti-American sentiment like Fallujah. It was in post-Katrina New Orleans.
Since the catastrophe wrought by the hurricane, many discussions have drawn connections between events in Louisiana and America's involvement in
the Middle East — including the argument made by critics of the Bush administration that the focus of Homeland Security has been detrimentally
shifted from domestic protection to foreign invasion. The response to Katrina appears to prove those critics correct.
But this week another, more implicit connection was made. Covering the pandemonium in New Orleans, the
Army Times labeled those interfering with the
rescue effort as insurgents:
NEW ORLEANS — Combat operations are underway on the streets "to take this city back" in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina...
While some fight the insurgency in the city, others carry on with rescue and evacuation operations. Helicopters are still pulling hundreds of
stranded people from rooftops of flooded homes.
In fact, the entire Army Times piece could read as an update of activities in the more troubled areas of Iraq by inserting a few simple geographical
substitutions. But describing New Orleans in combat-operations terms and labeling American citizens insurgents — a word more commonly reserved for
suicide-bombing bad guys in the war on terror — not only seems bizarre but also bears foreboding implications.
What could have created such an invocation? As most are now aware, Katrina turned Louisiana citizens into evacuees, several thousand of whom have been
trapped in New Orleans for more than a week and suffering thirst, hunger and the stench of dead bodies. Frustration at the lengthy rescue attempts
escalated the situation from bad to worse; during the time that citizens were trapped, all hell broke
loose. There were shootings and rapes by groups of young men. Mayor Ray Nagin said that his police chief was almost kidnapped. Someone even fired
at a rescue helicopter.
Such chaos interfered with the rescue and recovery effort — an effort primarily executed by the National Guard. At the moment, 58,000 active
duty personnel have been sent to Louisiana to assist with the disaster. Some have been tasked with restoring order
to the more volatile areas where violence threatens the safety of those who remain and those assisting the rescue effort.
For archives, audio, and background about the column, click here.
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Venting frustrations at the rescue effort is one thing. But attacking soldiers and people who lost their homes is another, and
such crimes should not be disregarded. But an insurgency?!
The immediate challenge, of course, is to find any appropriate label for the residents of New Orleans who have undergone extreme trauma and transgressed the law in a
state of chaos. The situation of those who survived the unprecedented hurricane and were then trapped in the
convention center, Superdome or their homes is devastating, and perhaps no vocabulary exists to describe it. And perhaps that's why
headlines were so strange. The Minneapolis Star Tribune, for example, ran the headline "Cauldron of Anarchy."
But despite the absence of a more appropriate vocabulary, did the Army Times still mean to describe New Orleans in the same way as the tumultuous
areas in the Middle East? Most likely.
The US armed forces are not in the business of community relations or spreading flyers. (In fact, the Federal Emergency Management Agency brought in
firefighters to handle that.) The US armed forces are in
the business of ass-kicking. And that applies to anyone who gets in their way. In the mentality of "us" versus
"those who stand in our way," insurgent — though inappropriate — does become an applicable term.
The problem with all of this, however, is that the objective of the National Guard is to facilitate the rescue effort by providing safety and
restoring order. Those in opposition to the Armed Forces in New Orleans are not nameless, faceless bad guys in the Middle East — they're Americans.
And if Americans can be labeled insurgents, a whole can of worms opens up.
For one thing, keeping America secure from terrorists now obviously means the possibility of domestic as well as foreign combat operations
between those who impart a particular order and those who oppose it. If members of the military come to evacuate people from their homes and are resisted,
are those resisting also insurgents?
Additionally, this calls into question the identity of insurgents. Using such a blanket term eliminates any characteristics but wrongdoing.
Race has been a hotly debated aspect
of Katrina's aftermath since 70 percent of New Orleans is black; but race becomes swallowed up in a term like insurgent.
Maybe most importantly, if the criteria for determining insurgents comes into question in the US, what does that entail for its application
overseas?
"This is making a lot of us think about not reenlisting," Ferguson said. "You have to think about whether it is worth risking your neck for someone
who will turn around and shoot at you. We didn't come here to fight a war. We came here to help."
The response to Hurricane Katrina shows that in today's combat operations, war and help aren't necessarily unconnected.
E-mail Taylor Carik at cari0021 at umn dot edu.
— graphic by Derek Evernden (derek@ocellus.net)
