The Uruk Police

Liverani does not use a great deal of italicized words in his book on Uruk, but it is curious to note that he uses it twice in a few lines where he discusses the military and it's early role on page 51. He states that the early military, which in many ways was a police force as much as an army, were used to protect the wealth of the rich. He goes on to talk about how their role was not one of protecting the general populace, and he concludes by saying "the maintenance of public order is to the advantage of all."
All his comments seemed to point to the role of the army and even the police as having changed. His comments seemed to point to today's police and army as being forces that were looking out for the general populace. Now this concept is not unusual, indeed most police officers and soldiers would tell you they serve the people and protect them. However if we look at things as analytically as we are viewing the early city of Uruk we can see that very little has changed. The truth is the police force is still there to keep wealth protected from the people. When a store is robbed the real concern doesn’t come from the workers of the store but from the owners of the store. The same seems to be true of Uruk. The real concern was not the people but the wealth of the leaders.
Does maintenance of public order really benefit all of us? Even if the answer is yes the truth is that it does not benefit all of us to the same degree. Bill Gates benefits much more from maintenance of public order then I do. Because of public order, he is able to maintain and even increase his wealth. He does not need a private army to protect his property or his wealth, because there is a public one that does it for him. For my part even if there was a decrease in public order I really don't have much to worry about. For example, last semester my bike was stolen. It was quite possibly one of my more valuable items; yet to be frank the police were not too worried about it, because in the compared to the wealth of others my bike is not very valuable. So we see that even lapses in public order dont really hurt the rich but the people. The system of security has always been and always will be about the rich protecting their riches.