Trump administration creating an American 'war zone'

If a U.S. president was just itching to militarize the streets of a politically unfriendly American city like some blustery third-world despot, how would he go about it?

First, he might start with a pretense that verges on legitimate — say, immigration enforcement. But rather than the routine kind of enforcement that quietly happens all the time, he’d do better to arrange for big showy raids by uniformed troops, well aware that this approach would whip up local protests.

He’d know all it takes is a few violent protesters among the mostly peaceful ones to give him an excuse to ramp up military presence. The dark beauty of this scheme is that it becomes self-justifying: The more he militarizes a city, the more a few hothead protesters might give him the excuse he wants to militarize it mor