Before I post this article I’m going to paste in a couple of comments made at the bottom of the article. We have just lost our minds asking the military to play a domestic police role? Doesn’t anyone know history anymore? Dictators and tyrannts take over this way…I don’t care if this is the United States of America, it can happen here also. I remember what I heard Adrian Rogers say many times.“All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing” and this desire to put military on our streets for law enforcement has got to stop. It may sound like a good gesture,but it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. History shows this…..Here’s the two comments I spoke of:
Usher in the New Year with solders in the streets of America. What a fine little fascist paradise we have become. Get use to seeing machingun toting skin head jackbooted Nazi’s on your corners. Your papers pleeze.
Happy New Year, One and ALL
John Galt
December 31, 12:26 PM
Thank you again Jay for speaking truth to power in such a comendable way.
December 31, 12:18 PM
A couple months ago, the Department of Defense announced it was assigning a full-time Army unit to be on call to facilitate military cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security in the event of another terrorist attack.
A report in the Army Times last month first brought the domestic deployment to light. The Army’s 3rd Infantry Division 1st Brigade Combat Team became the first unit assigned permanently to Northern Command.
According to the Army Times report, the Team would be on-call to respond in the event of a natural disaster or terror attack anywhere in the country, or they could be used to “help with civil unrest and crowd control.” (Link)
This clearly raises issues with respect to the Posse Comitatus Act, but even more troubling are recent reports a U.S. Army War College professor has written a report asserting military intervention would be required in a number of domestic scenarios.
The author warns potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.” The situation could deteriorate to the point where military intervention was required, he argues.
The author of the report notes the proposals are his alone and don’t represent U.S. policy, but it’s also certain the report has been read throughout the Defense Department. But economic collapse? Loss of functioning political order? Purposeful domestic resistance? That’s one terrifying slippery slope. And not in keeping with American values.
babybttrfly
Steve Hilton
Mike
Jan 02, 2009 @ 12:03:21
I lived outside the USA for 30 years. I worked as a Humanitarian Aid Relief Coordinator and Educator for First Responders. This allowed me entrance into numerous nations across four continents.
There is no way to adequately express the fear and intimidation within the nations that have their military or “paramilitary” police on the streets. I’ve lived in nations where hearing bomb squad sirens were a daily event…you get used to that after a while. However, you never get used to seeing the military, with their rifles leveled at the people walking down the streets. This, of course, does not include the suspicion of neighbor spying on neighbor.
There was a time I’d gotten arrested and detained…my “offense”…I did not avert my eyes while passing military personnel. My passport was confiscated until things got cleared up. I was ONLY in that nation for Humanitarian reasons (and had been invited by a similar organizatiion) I was not political or religious. However, when you have a police state…everyone is suspect…and no one is safe!
It’s my belief that most Americans have no clue what this is like. When I returned home permanently (2005) it was like landing on a different planet.
Steve, we may have different views on some things…yet, I wanted you to know I appreciated you stopping by my site. The topic of ‘military on the streets’ is something I’ve been personally concerned since coming back home. It seemed no one took this possibility seriously until recently.
I hope you don’t mind…but I emailed this post to several colleagues along with your site address.
Regards,
Michelle
Jan 02, 2009 @ 23:03:58
Thank you Michelle…and you are so right about the “different planet”. My concern, as with most of us who still hold faith, is how long will it last?
Jan 03, 2009 @ 00:14:21
Steve…I believe it will last until we as citizens begin pushing back some on these issues. We need to demand that our elected officials obey that “rule of law” they are so quick to talk about here in the US…No matter how you cut it putting the military on our streets is a direct violation of The Insurection Act of 1807 and of course The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878……
The Posse Comitatus law was passed in 1878, not only in response to some of the abuses committed by federal troops during the Reconstruction period in the South after the Civil War, but more specifically after many suspected that federal troops influenced the election of 1876, in which Rutherford B. Hayes was chosen by the Electoral College and federal troops ran some polling places in the South. Specifically, Hayes won the disputed electoral votes of South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida, states where President U.S. Grant had sent troops as a posse comitatus by federal marshals at the polls if deemed necessary.
Jan 03, 2009 @ 10:15:39
Absolutely right Mike, it all involves being a student of the Constitution, and taking the action that it allows us to. It seems that the “government” hasn’t read it, nor the two laws you mention.
Jan 04, 2009 @ 00:14:46
Michelle, I forgot to thank you for such a great testimony as to why we don’t need the military doing law enforcement and why the founding fathers were against a standing army.
That’s right, Steve and the Constitution allows us freedom of speech to tell the government…wait a minute that’s against the law! And it they still insist, we can vote them out or impeach them depending on whom it is we’re talking about.
NOAH WEBSTER
“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.”
(Philadelphia 1787)
“If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy”
-James Madison
Jan 04, 2009 @ 16:27:47
Jan 11, 2009 @ 00:11:46
Good thing that’s over with, because now it allows SCOTUS to decide on one legal case, that is: Is he a natural-born citizen, or not, and does the Constitution mean a damn, anyway?
For that’s what ()bama will come out with this deliberately contrived (Espionage) MLK Day, just “Happenstance” the day before the Inaugrual, saying that, since “America is the land of immigration,” and since everyone who loves entitlements & gets Welfare loves me, why can’t an immigrant be Prez?
Dissing the Constitution while at the same time cracking the Executive Branch in two, for in that there are already rumors of Military Officers who feel they cannot take orders from him. (This, at this crucial long-laid espionage point in time with the Commies, etc.) No treaty, no law, signed by him would be valid, and other countries simply won’t do business with us.
As he had predicted, there will be “Blood in the streets,” and “Military Mutiny,” and the Other Side seems to have it well planned.
The one alternative, to which I am personally central, would be the public illumination of the Gary Condits’ “Sexual Political Embarrassment Disposal Service,” to which I was sworn to secrecy 30 odd years ago, and just how many in Congress that means should be kicked out.
Hence: An emergency reelection, and the Constitution affords for this.
Let’s have a “Communal Presidency” of the living ex’s in the meantime.
Wait, there’s more… Since the JFK & MLK assassination, the Presidency’s been “Stewarded” by the trained elite of the CIA, the Bush’s, with the occasional rat let in to see what they’d be up to. ()bama, as a “Trained since young” infiltrator based from Indonesia had been known all that long time, too.
Whether simply piggybacked by the CIA, or just run by the Commies all that whole long time, it’s time for real people to run DC.
Then, a new Congress, then aware of this long-term attempt to ruin us financially with slave-labor WALMART $ as an act of war (Not to mention the assassinations) will gladly denounce the Treasury Bonds as Null & Void.
A clean financial slate for the US – The only possible option, in my opinion.