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[bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

This essay was just published today.  There are quite a few links within the 
essay, so there is much background for anyone interested.  We have discussed 
this subject before, concerning Naomi Wolf's hysterics about GWB refusing to 
cede power to BO, and the troops allocated for homeland protection .  Well, 
this is not a happy holiday subject, so please delete if it is not of 
interest, but I found the essay insightful. I had read another of Grigg's 
essays earlier in the year and found him knowledgeable and rational. No one, 
homesteader or not is immune from the approach of bigger more centralized 
government and the men with guns who enforce their policies.........

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En Route to Military Rule
by William Norman Grigg

         


"Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national 
conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its 
dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the 
continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will 
compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security 
to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political 
rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of 
being less free."

~ Federalist Paper No. 8, in which Alexander Hamilton displayed an atypical 
ardor to defend liberty against state power.




"We no longer have a civilian-led government." 

This ominous conclusion comes to us from Thomas A. Schweich, who held the 
title of deputy assistant secretary of state for international law 
enforcement affairs in the Bush Regime, by way of a December 21 Washington 
Post op-ed column. Lamenting "the silent military coup d’etat that has been 
steadily gaining ground below the radar screen of most Americans and the 
media," Schweich describes the infusion of the military "into a striking 
number of aspects of civilian government" as "the most unnerving legacy of 
the Bush administration." 

Schweich is not an advocate of limited-government who managed to burrow 
deeply into the Bu’ushist Welfare/Warfare State; he is an advocate of "soft 
power" imperialism, the supposedly benign variety that focuses more on 
hectoring foreigners about their shortcomings, rather than unceremoniously 
bombing them into blood pudding. Oh, sure – even "soft power" imperialism 
involves the threat and occasional practice of bombing, but usually only amid 
cries of anguished reluctance following the performance of the proper 
multilateralist sacraments. (For useful examples, consult the Clinton-era 
bombing campaigns in the former Yugoslavia.)

Schweich seems particularly miffed that the military shouldered aside the 
State Department’s efforts to train civilian "law enforcement" personnel in 
Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the Pentagon’s habit of Bogarting all of the 
boodle set aside for "reconstruction" projects. 

But even though his protests have the sectarian flavor of bureaucratic 
in-fighting, Scweich validates his shocking announcement of the demise of 
civilian government with some very solid examples. For instance, the 
military’s domination of law enforcement training in Iraq and Afghanistan 
have created police forces that "have been unnecessarily militarized – 
producing police officers who look more like militia members than ordinary 
beat cops. These forces now risk becoming paramilitary groups, well armed 
with US equipment, that could run roughshod" over civilian governments.

While this and other "military takeovers of civilian functions" took place "a 
long distance from home," Schweich elaborates, the same all-devouring 
militarism is at work here as well. 

Witness the huge and expanding role played by the military in narcotics 
enforcement, including the hugely expensive "Merida Initiative" through which 
the Bush Regime has collaborated with Mexico’s narcotics syndicates (which 
are, to use a common term on this side of the border, public-private 
partnerships) to propagate unprecedented violence and misery in that country. 

The most important example Schweich lists is the Pentagon’s plan "to deploy 
20,000 U.S. soldiers inside our borders by 2011, ostensibly to help state and 
local officials respond to terrorist attacks or other catastrophes. But that 
mission could easily spill over from emergency counterterrorism work into 
border-patrol efforts, intelligence gathering and law enforcement efforts – 
which would run smack into the Posse Comitatus Act…. So the generals are not 
only dominating our government activities abroad, at our borders and in 
Washington, but they also seem to intend to spread out across the heartland 
of America." 

While Schweich’s concern and candor do him credit, his warnings are 
tantamount to urging that we secure the barn door long after the prize 
stallion has fled, been butchered, and graced a Frenchman’s dinner table. 

The military "spill-over" into domestic law enforcement that he warns against 
began as a trickle in 1981 with passage of the Military Cooperation with 
Civilian Law Enforcement Act. That trickle is now a cascade as voluminous and 
consistent of any found in Niagara Falls. Once again, this is chiefly – but 
not entirely – due to the so-called War on Drugs.

   
  The eyes of the military are upon you: Active-duty military personnel 
collect photographs of anti-war activists during a 2002 Washington, D.C. 
protest against the then-impending Iraq war. 
   
For some time, military involvement in domestic intelligence gathering has 
included personal surveillance of political activists; more recently, this 
has expanded to the use of spy satellites to monitor political protests on 
behalf of militarized law enforcement bodies. While Schweich is properly 
alarmed by the way the Pentagon has created Iraqi and Afghan police forces 
that are little more than miniature armies of occupation, he apparently 
hasn’t noticed that the same process is well underway here in the United 
States as well. 

In some ways, Schweich’s jeremiad is a good update and companion piece to 
Brig. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap’s prescient essay "The Origins of the American 
Military Coup of 2012," published in the Winter 1992–93 issue of the U.S. 
Army War College journal Parameters. 

Written in the form of a smuggled prison letter composed by "Prisoner 
222305759," condemned to death for "treason" by the American military junta 
of Gen. E.T. Brutus, Dunlap’s essay described many trends that he feared 
would culminate in "a military that controls [the American] government and 
one that, ironically, can’t fight." 

As government corruption and ineptitude grew, "The one institution of 
government in which people retained faith was the military," explained 
Dunlap’s literary stand-in. The military was thus burdened with countless 
tasks unrelated to warfare – from law enforcement, to supplementing the work 
of doctors and teachers, from environmental preservation efforts to 
bolstering the financially stricken airline industry. (Dunlap, incidentally, 
extensively documents how the military was either active, or planning to 
become involved, in all of those missions by the early 1990s.) 

Likewise, the military’s missions abroad were increasingly Operations Other 
Than War (OOTW), a term that came into vogue subsequent to publication of 
Dunlap’s essay. At the same time, a cultural dissonance grew between the 
military and the public it was supposedly serving. 

The structural defects in this new model military were displayed to painful 
effect in what the author describes (by way of prediction, remember) as "the 
wretched performance of our forces in the Second Gulf War," particularly 
following Iran’s intervention in 2010: "Preoccupation with humanitarian 
duties, narcotics interdiction, and all the rest of the peripheral missions 
left the military unfit to engage an authentic military opponent."

While the military was no longer well-suited to fight and win wars 
(including, of course, patently unjust wars of aggression), its subtle and 
thoroughgoing integration into every element of domestic life made it 
perfectly suited to carry out a coup: "Eventually, people became acclimated 
to seeing uniformed military personnel patrolling their neighborhood. Now 
troops are an adjunct to almost all police forces in the country. In many of 
the areas where much of our burgeoning population of elderly Americans live – 
[military dictator] Brutus calls them 'National Security Zones’ – the 
military is often the only law enforcement agency. Consequently, the military 
was ideally positioned in thousands of communities to support the coup."

Very little of consequence separates the speculative world described by 
Dunlap from the one in which we presently live. One institutional impediment 
is the Posse Comitatus Act (or whatever remains of it), which was intended to 
prevent direct involvement of the military in domestic law enforcement.

But this measure, which was always a tissue-paper barricade at best, is all 
but extinct as we near the end of the Bush era. And the ranks of military 
scholars are planted thickly with people devising arguments to destroy 
whatever may remain of the Posse Comitatus proscriptions.

In a paper published by the US Army War College in early 2006, Lt. Col. Mark 
C. Weston of the U.S. Air Force Reserve points out that the Posse Comitatus 
Act has been perforated with "exceptions" practically since it was passed in 
1878. (Just weeks after signing the act – passage of which was part of a deal 
that ensured his presidency – Rutherford B. Hayes deployed the Army to carry 
out police functions in New Mexico.) 

One of the biggest exceptions deals with what could be called the use of 
"civilian" police as military proxies, since the Pentagon is permitted "to 
provide equipment, transportation, training, supplies, and services to law 
enforcement officials as long as it does not directly and actively 
participate in law enforcement tasks," writes Weston. Which is to say that 
it’s permissible to militarize the police, as long as troops aren’t actually 
the ones pulling triggers and conducting arrests. This is, once again, 
exactly the same procedure being used to create the Afghan and Iraqi 
"militias" described by Thomas Schweich.

There are six formal exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act listed in Title 
32, Sec. 215.4 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Weston writes. To that 
list, he rather audaciously adds "One final exception worthy of discussion 
[namely] the concept of martial law." Referring to the Supreme Court’s 1866 
Ex Parte Milligan decision, Weston insists that martial law can properly be 
said to exist only in "the absence of order, courts, and constitution…. 
Martial law is the use of force by the military to maintain order by acting 
as the police, the court, and the legislature…. If the courts are open then 
[use of the term] martial law is not appropriate." 

Most domestic deployments of the military don't cross the threshold of 
martial law, Weston maintains, and he eagerly recommends making it easier for 
the military to carry out such missions by repealing the Posse Comitatus Act 
(or PCA). From Weston’s perspective, the PCA, which was never a good idea, 
has long since fallen into desuetude. He insists that the Act should either 
be repealed outright or modified in such a fashion as to make it entirely 
inconsequential.

Posse Comitatus, Weston writes, is "a significant obstacle to unified action 
on homeland security … an impediment to agility and adaptability of the 
military to national defense … [a hindrance to] national values and national 
purpose." Yet he prefers to "modify" the Act rather than abolish it, 
apparently to maintain – for now – the useful fiction that military and 
police powers remain separate, with civilian officials firmly in control of 
the former.

In an October 2000 essay entitled "The Myth of Posse Comitatus," Major Craig 
T. Trebilcock, a JAG officer in the U.S. Army Reserve offers an assessment 
quite similar to that of Lt. Col. Weston: The PCA is useless but not 
harmless, and best ignored if it can’t be dispensed with. 

The only value of the PCA, according to Trebilcock, is the fact that "it 
remains a deterrent to prevent the unauthorized deployment of troops at the 
local level in response to what is purely a civilian law enforcement matter." 
For example, it can result in administrative punishment or even criminal 
prosecution of "a lower-level commander who uses military forces to pursue a 
common felon or to conduct sobriety checkpoints off of a federal military 
post."

As of December 12 – when active-duty U.S. Marines conducted a joint highway 
sobriety checkpoint with California Highway Patrol officers – that example 
can be crossed off Trebilcock’s list. 

In his book An Empire Wilderness, Robert D. Kaplan describes a strategic 
planning session held at Ft. Leavenworth’s Battle Command Training Program 
shortly after the April 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing (a tragedy directly 
facilitated by several of the Regime’s three-letter agencies). One of the 
participants, a Marine Major named Craig Tucker, predicted that the threat of 
terrorism and domestic turmoil suggested that the military would have to "go 
domestic." 

While that prediction has been fulfilled, the process has yet to be fully 
consummated. On the continuum described by none other than Gen. George S. 
Patton – who considered domestic military deployment as the "most 
distasteful" form of service – we are presently somewhere between routine 
involvement of military personnel "in connection with Domestic Disturbances" 
and "Martial Law." That continuum ends with "Military Government," which 
differs from Martial Law in that it represents the complete abolition of 
civilian authority, as opposed to the enforcement of a civilian ruling 
elite’s will through direct military force.


God forgive us, if He can: Iraqi mourners display the lifeless body of an 
infant killed during a chemical weapons attack by US occupation troops. The 
burn marks on the child's body are the result of an attack using white 
phosphorous munitions. In a 1932 essay on domestic military deployments, Gen. 
George S. Patton – who ironically took care to avoid needless civilian 
casualties during World War II – recommended the use of white phosphorous to 
suppress insurrection.

In administering either Martial Law or Military Government, Patton – 
predictably enough – prescribed the pitiless application of lethal force. He 
digested his doctrine of domestic military missions into what he called "The 
Law and the Prophets of Riot Duty," a canon that includes the following 
directives:

"Take no orders from civil officials – federal, state, or municipal." 

"You may and should cooperate with police or state troops who may be present; 
but you and not they are the judge of the amount and character of this 
cooperation." 

"Should some orator start haranguing the crowd and inciting them to violence, 
grab him even if it brings on a local, small fight. Small fights are better 
than big ones. Words cunningly chosen change crowds into mobs." 

"Warn newspapers, theaters, and churches that if they encourage the mob, they 
are guilty of aiding them and that their leaders will be held personally 
accountable. Freedom of the press cannot be construed as 'license to 
encourage’ the armed enemies of the United States of America. An armed mob 
resisting federal troops is an armed enemy. To aid an enemy is TREASON. This 
may not be the 'law,’ but it is fact. When blood starts running, the law 
stops." 

"If you have captured a dangerous agitator and some 'misguided’ federal judge 
issues a writ of Habeas Corpus for him, try to see the judge to find out what 
he is liable to do…. There’s always the danger that the man might attempt to 
escape. If he does, see that he at least falls out of ranks before you shoot 
him. To be soft hearted might mean death to your men. After all, WAR IS WAR." 

"As in all military operations, information is vital. By the use of 
detectives, soldiers in civilian clothes, and friendly citizens, get all 
possible information about the condition within the city." 

"The use of gas is paramount…. While tear gas is effective, it should be 
backed up with vomiting gas." 

"Although white phosphorous is incendiary, it is useful in forming a screen 
for the attack of barricades and defended houses." 

"If you must fire, DO A GOOD JOB. A few casualties become martyrs; a large 
number becomes an object lesson." 


These admonitions, remember, were issued with respect to the use of military 
force against American citizens by a man revered as a patriotic hero by 
millions (including some lately given to second thoughts) – and who, 
ironically enough, was almost certainly assassinated by the same State he 
served with such ruthlessness. 

Patton's model for a domestic counter-insurgency "war" during the last 
depression would probably resemble the approach used by the military in 
dealing with serious internal upheaval in the depression that has just begun.

Significantly, Patton’s tactics track very closely with those employed to 
enforce US occupation of Iraq – including the use of hideous white 
phosphorous munitions. That occupation is supposedly slated to end in 2011 – 
the same year, incidentally, when the military’s 20,000-man Homeland Security 
force is supposed to be fully deployed.

If the conclusion voiced by Thomas Schweich and other very credible analysts 
is correct – if, indeed, we are living under a de facto military junta, the 
nature of which will become clear as the economic collapse strips away all 
politically comfortable pretenses – we may soon learn, in the most painful 
way possible, that our military missions abroad have been carefully training 
the occupation force that will extinguish whatever remains of our liberty.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w68.html