According to the Economist, “America’s police have become too militarized.” Not to be outdone, Business Insider published an article by Paul Szoldra, a former US marine who professed to be aghast at the scenes of camouflage-wearing, military-weapon-toting police officers patrolling the streets of an American city  in armored vehicles. Szoldra quotes one of his Twitter followers, another former soldier, who wrote: “We rolled lighter than that in an actual warzone.”

Some may be surprised to see such stories run in magazines like the Economist and Business Insider, but suddenly discussions about America’s militarized police forces are semi-mainstream. In the wake of the police killing of African-American teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the subsequent riots and protests, social media is littered with images of tear gas, tanks, and police in military gear with automatic weapons — all aimed at black people in the city.

Several publications and writers have rushed to alert us about their stories on the militarization of the police. Commentators have encouraged us to connect the dots between what is happening overseas and what is happening here. Hashtags referring to Ferguson and Gaza share the same caption. We are told by some that the war on terror has come home.