The ACLU‘s extensive report on police militarization shows a nation at war with itself. The War on Terror — a 13-year windmill joust that has generated an excess of military equipment — has merged with the War on Drugs, an exercise in futility seven years removed from the half-century mark.

Actual military combat, utilizing enlisted soldiers, has given birth to the same equipment now routinely being deployed to fight the crime formerly policed by normal police officers. Cell tower spoofers, surveillance drones, Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected personnel carriers (MRAPs) — all of these were developed for use by the military. And all of these have now found homes in local law enforcement armories.