- Posted by Christopher Estep on December 1, 2008
I never thought George W. Bush was a fascist. Apparently I was wrong:
The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.
The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.
What does this remind me of? Hm… sounds familiar but I just can’t place it.
Oh yeah, that’s right.
There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement.
You think?!?! The Posse Comitatus Act is short and to the point:
Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
A posse comitatus means as a domestic or local law enforcement body. It literally means “the power of the county” and the act is intended to keep the federal government out of states’ rights. It was enacted after President Grant used troops as poll monitors during Reconstruction.
Unfortunately, many choose to believe that because of other laws passed, that it doesn’t really apply anymore:
But does the act present a major barrier at the National Command Authority level to use of military forces in the battle against terrorism? The numerous exceptions and policy shifts carried out over the past 20 years strongly indicate that it does not. Could anyone seriously suggest that it is appropriate to use the military to interdict drugs and illegal aliens but preclude the military from countering terrorist threats that employ weapons of mass destruction? For two decades the military has been increasingly used as an auxiliary to civilian law enforcement when the capabilities of the police have been exceeded. Under both the statutory and constitutional exceptions that have permitted the use of the military in law enforcement since 1980, the president has ample authority to employ the military in homeland defense against the threat of weapons of mass destruction in terrorist hands.
This, my friends, is the definition of “slippery slope”.
Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security