The police shootings in Dallas and Baton Rouge represent a tragic loss of life. They added a new level of divisiveness and finger-pointing for those who were already inclined to be suspicious of protests against racially-biased police violence. And they threatened police programs, like those underway in Dallas, that had been genuinely effective in bringing together police and communities.
But the events in Dallas and Baton Rouge have more in common than just police as targets. There’s another factor in these two events, and in some others across the nation. Not just that the targets were police. Not just that the killers used assault weapons. It’s a factor that might have been addressed, if Republicans hadn't gotten in the way.
As the right-wing outrage machine would have it, the shootings of police in Dallas and Baton Rouge by U.S. military veterans were the fault of President Obama. “How many law enforcement and people have to die because of a lack of leadership in our country?” Trump recently wrote in a Tweet.
As it turns out, those law enforcement officials may have died because of an actual lack of leadership. In Congress.
... seven years ago, when a little-known division in the new president’s Department of Homeland Security sought to explore the potential violence of returning veterans—one that might have aided local law enforcement with intelligence in Dallas and Baton Rouge—it was Congressional Republicans who succeeded in pushing to shut the program down.
Why did Republicans cut off the funds? Because they didn’t like how the results of those studies implicated right-wing groups in generating an environment of fear and distrust.
But a prediction found in a 2009 report, titled “Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” ignited the rage of conservative and veterans groups across the country. The DHS study warned that returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, traumatized abroad and underserved at home, would pose a particular threat to law enforcement while those two wars scaled down, in part by being drawn to radicalized movements inside the country.
If the study hadn’t been ended, the group might not only have done a better job at predicting where and how traumatized veterans might become radicalized—it might have actually implemented programs to reduce the threat.
Though the numbers of non-military shooters in the country dwarf those of returned veterans, some of the most high-profile and deadliest shootings in recent years have been carried out by ex-military. These include the Umpqua College shooting in Oregon in 2015; the Navy Yard shooting in 2013; the Wisconsin Sikh Temple shooting in 2014; and the Fort Hood massacre in 2009. … And before those incidents, the country endured the DC sniper, the slaughter of 169 people by Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and the Texas shooting at Luby’s restaurant in 1991, each orchestrated by a former veteran.
Instead of doing something helpful, Republicans seized on the report as an opportunity to attack the Obama administration.
"To characterize men and women returning home after defending our country as potential terrorists is offensive and unacceptable,” said John Boehner, joining a chorus of congressional Republicans. Conservative media stoked the outrage, including blogger Michelle Malkin, who called the report “one of the most embarrassingly shoddy pieces of propaganda I'd ever read out of DHS.”
The program was cancelled only days later. And as it turns out, years too soon.