Last month, the Army Times reported that, for “the first time,” (and yeah, this is a direct quote), “an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment” inside the United States. We’re not talking a temporary assignment á la Katrina – rather, the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team (the “First of the Third”) is being given a permanent, dedicated assignment under NORTHCOM, the Army’s Northern Command for the purposes of (and, again, I quote) “help[ing] with civil unrest and crowd control.”
A unit that has spent “35 of the last 60 months in Iraq,” with a full complement of battle-stressed warfighters, some suffering from PTSD, is now potentially to be deployed into some future, undefined imaginary tense situations in our major cities in full battle gear, including “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded… nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.”
Oh yeah. Nothing to be worried about here. How ’bout them Phils, huh?
Clue one: the stated mission literally makes no sense
I can’t remember ever seeing a “crowd” that needed a military combat team to “control” it. Especially now that our urban police forces are so helpfully kitted out with rubber bullets, tear gas and Tasers.
We have National Guardsmen, many of whom have similar wartime experience as the First of the Third, whose legally-defined role it is to perform these functions under the command of the state governors. There has not yet been any justification presented for the assertion that suddenly what is needed is a Federal military presence under command of the President.
Clue number two: it’s illegal… or it used to be
The Posse Comitatus Act, in 1878, made it a crime for the military to perform civilian functions inside the US. The one exception to this was spelled out in the 1807 Insurrection Act. In the 2006 Defense Authorization Act, that exception was broadened to include “natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition.” It was, helpfully, left up to the President, and the President alone, to define what that last part means.
Clue the third: martial law has already been held out as a threat
U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman of California spoke before Congress (this actually happened, it’s in the Congressional Record and viewable on YouTube), that unnamed Administration officials threatened to declare martial law if the $700 billion bailout bill wasn’t passed:
“The only way they can pass this bill is by creating and sustaining a panic atmosphere. … Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday that the sky would fall, the market would drop two or three thousand points the first day and a couple of thousand on the second day, and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no.”
I mean, it’s certainly in the realm of possibility that a United States Congressman is either lying or bugshit insane. Given the bullying style of this Administration, though, Occam’s Razor kind of pushes me in the direction of taking him at face value.
So, if they threatened martial law if the market crashed…. and if the market is now crashing or teetering on the edge of a crash… do I gotta draw you guys a map?
Clue IV: Chekhov’s gun
Russian playwright Anton Chekhov once said “if in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.” Why would the Bush Administration arrogate this enormous power to itself if it didn’t intend to use it? Why did they deploy 5,000 battle-hardened soldiers inside this country now: a month before bitterly-contested national elections – almost certainly to be lost in a big way by the ruling party – and at a time of national anxiety about the economy?
I’m not seriously advocating panic or hyper-dramatizing the situation. But even under the most optimistic assumptions about the goals and potential outcomes of this deployment… wouldn’t prudence sort of demand that people ask some fucking questions of their government? Isn’t that just common sense?
Or is it just me?
