Disturbing Trend in our Military: Viewing citizens as threats

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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 brainstorm 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 “Te apart 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 no 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 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.”

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 throw 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…