The use of military surveillance aircraft during the criminal investigation into the string of murders in the Washington, D.C., area further encroaches on constitutional protections and broader rights won by working people.

The big-business press reported almost casually that the Montgomery County police and the FBI made the request for assistance to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who quickly agreed to provide RC-7 Airborne Reconnaissance Low aircraft. The planes were flown by military crews with FBI agents on board to send images they took to cops on the ground.

Over the past year, the U.S. rulers have sought to get working people to accept a military presence on U.S. territory, including military planes patrolling cities, National Guard troops searching vehicles at bridges and tunnels in New York and other cities, and armed federal cops on commercial passenger flights. Under the cover of the coming assault on Iraq, U.S. officials recently announced that in the coming months, thousands of National Guard and Army Reserve troops will be deployed at factories, power plants, hospitals, and other facilities in the United States.

These moves build on the steps taken by Washington to establish a North American Command--set up by the Clinton administration and activated last month--in charge of military operations on U.S. territory for the first time since the post-Civil War period. From the passage of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, the U.S. armed forces have in most cases been barred from domestic operations.

The "war on terrorism" has generally been the rationale used to justify the domestic use of the military and infringements on workers’ rights. In the case of the Washington area murders, however, this pretext was largely not used. The military joined a regular, albeit sensationalized, police operation--one in which the cops also unleashed gratuitous brutality through widespread roadblocks, arbitrary vehicle searches, and detentions. In this way, the U.S. government is broadening the definition of "homeland security" to include the argument of maintaining a "safe," stable "homeland."

In taking such steps, the capitalist rulers are acting not only to defend their interests today, but in anticipation of the social explosions and labor battles, and other forms of resistance by working people that the long-term crisis of their system will spawn.

The steps toward increased domestic militarization go hand in hand with other attacks on constitutional rights, such as the U.S. government’s insistence that by branding individuals "enemy combatants" it can deny due process and legal counsel, not only to workers born abroad but also to U.S. citizens such as Yaser Esam Hamdi and José Padilla, also known as Abdullah al-Muhajir. These attacks are a threat to the ability by working people to organize and fight for our interests against the employers and their government, and should be vigorously opposed.  
 
 
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