Note: Baker was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun for many years...and a damned good one.
From Russ Baker's blog:
Monday, August 8, 2005
ARMY TROOPS IN US STREETS?
In Friday’s blog, I expressed some concern about the government’s prosecution of several private individuals for having passed along classified information obtained from a government employee. (See below). I’m particularly worried about whether this is part of a general clampdown on dissent, because there appears to be a growing pattern of such things. As to the merits of that case, I’ll just note that there’s often little basis for the claim that classified material is vital to real ‘national security,’ or that public airing of the information is inimical to the national interest, whatever that might be.
On Sunday, came yet another troubling sign. In the New York Times, we read of the case of a New York-area translator and US citizen facing 20 years in prison for providing material aid to terrorism and conspiring to deceive the government. Although the reporter says that some outside of the prosecution seem to think this fellow clearly did something wrong, it is clear that she – and most of her sources – are alarmed by the harshness of the potential sentence given a less than clear case of wrongdoing. (Among other things, there is nothing about the man to suggest any personal support for terror or even an inkling of such.) Read it yourself and see what you think.
Meantime, today has yet another potential cause for alarm. The Washington Post reports on plans being developed by the Pentagon to have normal military troops intervene domestically in various crisis scenarios. There are lots of reasons to worry about this, the most basic of which is that such operations can -- at least in theory -- lead to military government. The article contains various reassurances that there’s no cause for alarm, but here are some quick thoughts on particulars worth scrutinizing:
-The Washington Post got this story from “officers who drafted the plans.” Now, I wonder why those officers told the reporter about this. I’m assuming they spoke to him with the permission of their superiors, which means that this is a planned leak. It means that the military is trying to float the idea to see what kind of reaction it gets. I.e., Will there be an outcry or not?
-Given the above-mentioned stories, in which various US citizens are accused of threatening ‘national security’, one wonders why releasing the Pentagon plan (complete with a surprising amount of detail) is somehow not a threat to security.
-Now, read the following excerpt:
The war plans represent a historic shift for the Pentagon, which has been reluctant to become involved in domestic operations and is legally constrained from engaging in law enforcement. Indeed, defense officials continue to stress that they intend for the troops to play largely a supporting role in homeland emergencies, bolstering police, firefighters and other civilian response groups.
But the new plans provide for what several senior officers acknowledged is the likelihood that the military will have to take charge in some situations, especially when dealing with mass-casualty attacks that could quickly overwhelm civilian resources.
"In my estimation, [in the event of] a biological, a chemical or nuclear attack in any of the 50 states, the Department of Defense is best positioned -- of the various eight federal agencies that would be involved -- to take the lead," said Adm. Timothy J. Keating, the head of Northcom, which coordinates military involvement in homeland security operations.
The plans present the Pentagon with a clearer idea of the kinds and numbers of troops and the training that may be required to build a more credible homeland defense force. They come at a time when senior Pentagon officials are engaged in an internal, year-long review of force levels and weapons systems, attempting to balance the heightened requirements of homeland defense against the heavy demands of overseas deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Now, here are a few thoughts and questions relating to that.
-Why, with all the massive budgeting and preparing for emergencies, do we need the military involved? What about the vast Department of Homeland Security, which swallowed up pre-existing entities like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA? What about the thousands upon thousands of trained responders? What about police and National Guard? Why should that not be enough?
-How much of this is designed to satisfy the gaping maw of the defense industry, for whom the state of never-ending war has been a tremendous boon, after a dry spell immediately after the USSR collapsed? (Read the annual reports from these companies, which don't even try to hide their delight at the new marketing opportunities since 9/11). The Post piece mentions that the military command for North America (Northcom) has grown so much in under three years that it now has 640 headquarters staff, more than the military has for operations in Latin America.
-Why is there so little talk about how this came about? The Bush Administration didn’t cause the 9/11 attacks, but had things been handled differently, that might have turned out to represent something of an aberration, an essentially manageable situation where reasonable risks are met with reasonable responses. Obviously, disasters like 9/11 need to be addressed, but the question was, how? Thanks to the Iraq war, we are now seeing that still-limited threat scenario evolve into a wholesale transformation of our world -- everywhere, and at home. And we’re still not, as a country, discussing that.
-There’s mention in the article of “crowd control” – and it doesn’t take a lot to imagine that, although it may be intended to control crowds panicked by an attack, troops might be used to control any kind of crowd deemed to be ‘out of control’ – including crowds of domestic dissenters. (We already got a whiff of that with excesses outside the GOP convention in 2004)
That there's an ideological component at work is indisputable. The article quotes a staffer at the very conservative Heritage Foundation speaking approvingly about the Pentagon’s “acknowledg(ing) that it would have to respond…” as a “big step.”
-The article says that Pentagon brass doesn’t want standing units, but to use a common pool of troops trained for homeland and overseas assignments. I see troubles there, too. When troops are operating abroad, they’re often in war zones, in highly volatile situations where civil liberties and other niceties play little or no role. Should those same soldiers suddenly be deployed to Washington or Madison, Wisconsin?
There’s talk of mixing it up with entities that do traditionally have responsibilities for domestic order, including having National Guard officers in charge of task forces that could include ordinary active-duty soldiers. Again, this makes me nervous – it looks a lot like getting around constitutional prohibitions on using active-duty troops. And then, there’s this doozy of a quote from Admiral Timothy Keating, head of Northcom:
"It could be a challenge for the commander who's a Guardsman, if we end up in a fairly complex, dynamic scenario," Keating said. He cited a potential situation in which Guard units might begin rounding up people while regular forces could not.
Folks, can we all just stop a moment from our orgy of denial and deliberate distraction, what with the explosion of ‘reality shows,’ fascination with cooking, home improvement and real estate speculation, to get a handle on what is going on here?
Wrap.
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