NYT: White House increasingly resembles a Washington version of the Green Zone

[Dennis Donovan]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/us/politics/white-house-security.html


Protesters approached a newly built chain-link fence in front of the White House on Thursday.Credit...Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times

By Peter Baker
June 5, 2020
Updated 7:34 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON — President Trump was furious when news got out last weekend that as protesters gathered outside the White House he had been rushed to an underground bunker. But now, as crowds keep coming back to demonstrate, the entire White House seems to be turning into one.

Every day, more fences go up and more concrete barriers are put in place as the security perimeter expands farther and farther. The universally recognized symbol of American democracy increasingly looks like a fortress under siege in the heart of the nation’s capital, a Washington version of the Green Zone that sheltered American and Iraqi officials in Baghdad during the worst of the war.

The measures taken over the last week have made the compound occupied by the president, his family and his staff more sealed off from demonstrations but also more removed from the American public. National Guard troops and riot police will certainly withdraw at some point, and White House officials say the barriers will be eventually removed. But history shows that security changes made at the White House in the heat of a momentary perceived threat often become lasting fixtures.

With the capital awash in security forces and much of downtown boarded up, Washington officials bristle at the martial moment and fear that the city is being transformed once more in a way evoking locked-down authoritarian nations instead of an open, pluralistic society.

“Keep in mind that that’s the people’s house,” Mayor Muriel E. Bowser said this week even as she sent Mr. Trump a letter asking him to withdraw extra security forces from the streets. “It’s a sad commentary that the house and its inhabitants have to be walled off.”

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Also see: **Heads up: There's busloads of troops entering the WH complex right now**

[dewsgirl]

1. K and R

[BigmanPigman]

2. I guess this isn't "the wall" he envisioned 4 years ago.

[Xolodno]

3. Someone needs to tell him...

....you aren't President when you fear your own public will storm your government residence and the Military has declined to help...and former Military brass is condemning you.