[lbo-talk] TLF's Iraq cure: hair of dog that bit you

[Josh Narins]

> The trend 
> started small in the 70s with the LAPD SWAT team and has filtered over 
> into many small-town forces as well: para-military in training, weapons, 
> and tactics.  9/11 has made this much, much worse.  "Task force" groups 
> who focus on one issue: drugs, gangs, terror, "crime" ... They have 
> different organizations, different budgets, and of course, see little 
> actual action, so they wind up 'pumped up' when they actually interact 
> with the citizenry.  Stuff like that has to stop; departments say they 
> need full-timers on the project to maintain proficiency, but rotation 
> through the whole force would be a) better overall for raising awareness 
> of all officers and b) lowering the tempo of operations when they come 
> up.

Yup. 

In the military, too. 

And in the economy in general, I imagine. 

Military examples include the obvious: we train a small number of
Signals Intelligence people in Arabic, rather than training large
numbers of Infantry in Arabic basics. 

I also suspect that increased numbers of well/cross trained police/FBI
would require less legal power to do their jobs, and there would be
other positive benefits. Jobs. Liberty. Eh, who needs it.