when i get my news from warren ellis, i'm concerned

via warren ellis: bOING-bOING reports an extremely alarming situation:

Al-Cajun?
Army Times Calls NOLA Katrina Victims "the Insurgency"

An article in the Army Times is referring to American citizens in New Orleans as "the insurgency". Does this mean the United States is now in an undeclared state of civil war?

yes, that's right. an insurgency. which is kindly defined by xeni jardin of bOING-bOING as

an organized rebellion aimed at overthrowing a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict

jesus christ.

just as disturbing to me is the first paragraph (emphasis mine):

"This place is going to look like Little Somalia," Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard's Joint Task Force told Army Times Friday as hundreds of armed troops under his charge prepared to launch a massive citywide security mission from a staging area outside the Louisiana Superdome. "We're going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control."

if there's one thing my father - a paratrooper, a member of Special Forces, a Green Beret & a Ranger in the US Army - taught me about the military, it's this: you do not use the military on your own citizenry. ever. the military's job is to pacify - ie. subdue by every means necessary - hostile territory. if you try to use them in policing actions, it will be a fucking nightmare. this information he told me repeatedly over the years as i was growing up. there is just no fucking around with the military, because their main job is to kill people. they don't learn crowd-control tactics like, say, the police: they learn urban combat techniques.

have we learnt nothing?

so now our government has authorised shoot-to-kill tactics within an area approximately the size of great britain within our own borders. in a mostly-minority region. which is now almost entirely minority due to the disaster.

shades of ethnic cleansing?