Disturbing Trend in our Military: Viewing citizens as threats.
Time to ask them whose side are they on!
We pay their salaries! Clothe their kids, send the care packages and give them jobs when they come out....
I am writing this to you today not to oversell a situation nor
undersell it, but to give you the facts as they have been presented.
It is not a new concept that the U.S. Military has think tanks and
generals brainstorming possible scenarios for War in the U.S. from
Invasions to small sleeper cells, As well as rioting or other
situations, It would be foolish not to have those types of plans fleshed
out and thought of and have tentative plans on the books.
However I had noticed a disturbing trend in our Military and Homeland
Securities thought process in regards to its own citizens in the last
few years.
This thought process is one of viewing a large segment of the population as “dangerous” or even as “enemies”.
Before I continue one must recognize that there are two groups in the
military, Officers and Enlisted, the realm of planning and thinking up
scenarios as well as leading men into battle in the real world is the
sole domain of the Officer Corps in the United States Military.
Enlisted Personnel are folks like you and me, often right out of high
school who do the brunt of the work, digging the fighting holes, filling
sandbags and busting down doors. Within both these camps are three
groups, shitbags who are without morals or ethics, thinking patriots who
understand the oaths we took, and robot patriots, who think they are
patriotic by following orders blindly.
Small Wars Journal
The Small Wars Journal is an online magazine that focuses on counter-insurgency,
an article appeared there last year (July 2012)
that focused on fighting a “hypothetical” right wing
secessionist/insurgency movement in the United States, this movement was
“motivated by the goals of the “tea party”".
This article was written by Col Kevin Benson USA(Ret.) who is a
seminar leader at the University of Foreign Military and Cultural
Studies at Fort Leavenworth who had served as the Director of the School
of Advanced Military Studies. The article was co-written by Jennifer
Weber who was a Associate Professor of History at the University of
Kansas.
The scenario was that a right wing militia took over the town of
“Darlington, South Carolina” and were inspired by the Tea Party, the
Militia establishes checkpoints across I-95 and “extremist” groups
across the country declare their support. The Governor is a “Tea party
supporter” and declines to send in law enforcement but quietly asks for
federal intervention, the Pentagon invokes the Insurrection act and
prepares for war. What is chilling about the article is that it spends
the entire time fleshing out organizational issues and only mentions the
ethical quandry of AMERICAN soldiers firing on AMERICAN citizens once,
with a mention that troops would have to “comply with the standing rules
of force”.
Laws like the Insurrection Act and Posse Comitatus were specifically
designed to rigidly constrict the U.S. Military from operating against
the American people, however we not batted an eye at assassinating
without trial American citizens accused of Terrorism overseas. A Forbes
article on the paper as well chillingly asks “I wonder if the President
would stand on legalities [Insurrection Act and Posse Comitatus].
Lincoln is remembered for winning the Civil War not suspending habeus
corpus.”
Now some of you may be saying that this is just an online journal not
officially associated with the U.S. Military, however this journal has
gotten a lot of buzz since its inception and is almost exclusively
written by former U.S Military Officers, and one can deduce from
experience that the Officer club is quite small and these types of
conversations are going on within “official” government think tanks
across the country. But hey you cant prove that, they haven’t actually
published anything in official military colleges or magazines about
this, so nothing to worry about!
Wrong!
WEST POINT
Just recently, Jan 15, 2013 the “Combating Terrorism Center” at
West Point published a paper warning of “far right groups” such
as the “anti-federalist” movement who support “civil activism,
individual freedoms and self-government”. No they weren’t talking about
the extremely small group of individuals who call themselves “sovereign
citizens” (although this group has been widely denigrated because of
the actions of a few individuals who took things to a extreme level).
They are talking about people who believe this (see if you match any of the criteria).
- “Espouse strong convictions regarding the Federal Government”
- Believe the Federal government “to be corrupt and tyrannical, with a
natural tendency to intrude on individual and constitutional rights”
- “Support Civil activism (this being marches, writing congressman, etc), individual freedoms and self government”
This paper also lumps anyone, from White Supremacists to the Tea
Party to those who post anything bad about the government or pro civil
liberties on facebook as being Far-right and part of one big group.
White supremacy and Nazi-ism is not in ANY way conducive to a belief in
individual liberties and freedom, Nazi-ism has been lumped in the
“right” category for as long as I can remember, A quick historical look
will show you that Progressivism and Statism has much more in common
with Nazi-ism than does any libertarian or Liberty oriented group or
individual. Nazi-ism believes in a strong centralized state,
subservience of business to the state and people, no free markets, no
civil liberties, welfare for all and management of the economy. Does
that sound like Conservatism or Liberalism? You take away gay/minority
rights/racial supremacy and the rest fits in perfectly with Liberals, to
fit it in with Conservatism you have to take away ALL individual
rights, All concepts of a free markets…and well then I guess you aren’t
left with anything conservative at all.
The paper “warns America” about these “far-right” groups and then
goes on to laud liberals, that their “worldviews are future- or
progressive -oriented” while “conservative perspectives are more
past-oriented, and in general, are interested with preserving the status
quo.” (which is presented as a backwards and bad thing, although the
status quo, as we see it today ISNT what conservatives want!)
Moving on, since they have now established that far right groups
include the Tea Party or anyone who doesn’t believe that ultimate power
should rest in the state, they go on to say that “far-right groups
ideology is designed to exclude minorities and foreigners, the liberal
democratic system is designed to emphasize civil rights, minority rights
and the balance of power”
Now once again they take all the tenets of Nazi ism (The word Nazi
stands for National Socialism) and White Supremacy and then cast that
brush widely on everyone not liberal or progressive. No true
libertarian or liberty oriented individual would believe in casting
aside ANY minority group, however we don’t believe in whats called the
tyranny of the minority, That no minority group whether religious,
racial or political ideology should have the ability to enact new
policies that affect the majority, without their consent. Many people
in the conservative movement also are strict on immigration policies,
this does not make them want to “exclude foreigners” it makes them want
those that come here respect our laws and not seek to circumvent them.
However this is ridiculous and splitting hairs.
Overall the piece is a hack job, that sounds like a conversation
topic in progressive circles spilled onto paper. Normally if you saw
this in Salon.com or the Huffington Post you would just blow it off,
however this is coming from WEST POINT!
Not only that but this is the Combating Terrorism Center and was
written by its director Arie Perliger who is in charge of terrorism
studies for cadets at West Point as well as a teach of Social Sciences
there.
DHS “Zombie Training”
Now normally this would be just a ridiculous waste of money for
stupid entertainment, but during Annual Counter-Terrorism Summit in San
Diego hosted by the HALO Corp there was a specific exercise that caught
the attention of the news. A “Zombie” attack…
Now one can look at this and see it as just a “fun” exercise, for the crowds…unfortunately its the crowds that are getting shot.
In this scenario, American citizens (nominally “zombies” with makeup)
are walking in mass towards a group of “first responders” and “troops”
participating in the exercise who then preceded to mow them down en
masse. Some have said that this is just fun, others have pointed to it
and the zombie mania as a way to desensitize people and first responders
to firing in mass crowds of people.
This was all paid for by DHS grants for the occasion.
CONCLUSION
Do I think that the U.S. Military is capable of killing American citizens? Yes they have done it.
Do I think that the U.S. Military would as an organization be able to
conduct counter insurgency against deemed “enemies” in the Homeland?
Some part will yes, some parts will not.
Overall I don’t think that a large chunk of the U.S. Military would
follow orders to violate the constitution and attack the lumped
categories of what has been called “far right”. However I find it a
disturbing trend, one probably motivated by a change in ideology from
the top down, that the military and various think tanks have begun to
view large segments of the American population as “Enemies”. What is
also disturbing is the broad categories for this, that basically anyone
unhappy with encroaching government control, anyone who thinks or speaks
against the current government policies is lumped into one category and
that category is titled as enemies of the State.
You make your own conclusions…