A reasonable subtitle might be "A How To Manual for society to end up giving a death sentence to pot dealers and other assorted drug warriors". And, really, how sad.
So, the readers digest version is a nearly one week ago local drug bust goes bad with seven persons shot, one of them being a cop killed in the process of serving a search warrant. The occupant of the "drug house" is now recovering in the hospital from gun shot wounds, and the local prosecutor announced in the newspaper today that a charge, among many others, of aggravated murder is being filed, and a death sentence will be sought.
But as is the case with so much of life, leaving out the details really leaves out the story.
I don't know about you, but whenever I read of an incident with six cops and the accused drug dealer all being shot in a hail of gunfire I automatically get geared up to read about "friendly fire" casualties. And when the government refuses to state, even at this late date, whether anything like that did or did not happen I just keep waiting for the other shoe to fall. Because, let's face it, with most pot growers not being Rambo, and the "team" serving the search warrant having the element of surprise, there likely never has been, nor ever will be, a situation where the unprepared gunfighter out guns the professional gunfighters so massively. Did Hollywood ever feature a Ramboesque figure who was a 37 year old night shift employee at a Walmart distribution center, 14 years removed from military service, and living in a low income neighborhood in Ogden, Utah?
The warrant, of course, was one of those "Drug War Specials" where the police all enact the strike force protocol, complete with adrenalin stimulating warm ups, and a door smasher process. Sure, there was some perfunctory "Nock and Announce" civil liberties language and, no doubt, some level of attempt at compliance. On the other hand,even in the best case we will, and do, commonly have doors smashed revealing, for any number of perfectly natural and innocent reasons, persons who had still not registrered even the slighest hint of recognition of what was about to come at them.
Was the law enforcement action here completely by the book and blameless right up until the point when a gunfire filled whirlwind of madness broke out? Might have been. Was some pothead cluelessly stoking one in a music filled back alcove while he was pruning brown leaves from the base of the finest bushes he had ever raised? Might have been. And when he was startled by a break in, did he slap leather and and go into full on "kill all of the mother fuckers" mode? Sure could have. Or did an interior door slam shut with a crack like a gunshot, or someone just stumble with a finger on the trigger of a gun not on safety? Certainly wouldn't be the first time, now would it! (And what can possibly be able to keep it from continuing ad infinitum?)
Something happened and a small war, or a large battle broke out. Streams of blood were shed, and at least one life was taken (at least one, because, not even counting the defendant, one officer is still in a medically induced coma). And that's just this time. And how thoroughly inexcusable is it all?
War, any war, comes with collateral damage. When we put troops in Iraq, we know, any and all of us who even vaguely qualify as "thinkers" know, that the innocent local family driving wherever and making some small mistake approaching a roadblock manned by U.S. soldiers will have their lives "innocently" taken. As will the extended Afghan family whose compound we target for a night time raid that, for some otherwise innocous reason results in our government paying reparations to their surviving relatives. And if we'll be honest we "civilans" know (and some even applaud the fact) that our "regular war warriors" are indoctrinated with the instruction to "take no risk, do whatever is necessary to come home safely".
Except that "The Drug War" is not really that kind of a war. Or is it?
Or a much less silly question! Why is it, in this supposedly enlightened age, that we, as a society, have chosen to engage in a Civil War against OURSELVES?
Yeah, we didn't like the Iraq War. And, yeah, we don't like the Afghanistan War. And, yeah, we're 100% against opening up a full on invasion type shooting war with Iran (or whoever turns out to be next).
But, really, in a situation where no one is able to figure out the battle lines on a day to day basis, if we're not even intelligent enough to stop killing ourselves (and certainly not able to coherently articulate the resaons for it), how can we, as a country, even possibly hope to make true peace with anyone else?