Throughout “Discipline and Punish” Foucault proposes that the privileged and unprivileged classes are perpetually engaged in a power struggle, which ultimately plays out in the institutions of justice. Foucault observes that the unprivileged are beset with laws dictating their behavior, subject to constant police surveillance, and forced by way of economic and political oppression to congregate in certain districts where they endure a markedly diminished standard of living. As a means of revolting against, or strategically gaining economic advantage under, these conditions, the unprivileged engage in criminal acts. Upon committing such acts, the unprivileged suffer innumerable inhumanities in the court and penal systems, from which they can never fully liberate themselves, even upon having paid restitution, because of the oppressive restrictions these systems subsequently place upon their ability to subsist ( e.g., find suitable employment, obtain affordable housing). As such, the institutions of justice, as a whole, inevitably foster a high rate of recidivism and ensure that a disproportionately higher number of the unprivileged are continuously inducted into its systems. The institutions of justice, established for the purpose of controlling criminality and discouraging delinquency, are found by Foucault to actually engender criminality and delinquency, to a large extent. According to Foucault, this is because the institutions of justice are quietly being implicated by the privileged in its struggle against the unprivileged for resources and power.
Foucault’s observation as to the institutions of justice cause me to wonder to what extent the United States’ military effort to fight terrorism might actually engender it within the occupied nations. In a sense, a similar sort of struggle for power and resources is occurring in these venues. By forcibly overtaking and declaring strict martial law within otherwise sovereign nations, the U.S. is effectively repressing these nations politically and economically and subjecting the nations’s peoples to markedly diminished standards of living. Despite the valiant efforts of the U.S. military forces to quash terrorist activities, the mere presence of these military forces is, to some extent, creating new terrorists. This is because the citizens of the occupied nations are continually having their liberties restricted and property destroyed in the name of police protection; they are brutally being cut down by their own country members for sympathizing, or complying, with U.S. efforts; they are unwittingly encountering terrorist attacks intended for the military forces; they are being drenched in the blood of scores of innocents, the misfortunate collateral damage of military maneuvers; they are perpetually living in a state of fear and unrelenting psychological and emotional distress. Consequently, they are forming an enormous unprivileged class that is well primed for revolt and retaliation.
I don’t deny that the U.S. military forces are amongst the strongest and most effective in the world, but for how long can they be expected to risk their lives in order to contain the political and social ills of other countries, at the command of a government that is not fully able to contain its own country’s political and social ills?
Terrorism is but a popular form of criminality.
