And this time, I doubt that anyone will even notice:
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.
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.
But the Bush administration and some in Congress have pushed for a heightened homeland military role since the middle of this decade, saying the greatest domestic threat is terrorists exploiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, dedicating 20,000 troops to domestic response — a nearly sevenfold increase in five years — “would have been extraordinary to the point of unbelievable,” Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, said in remarks last month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But the realization that civilian authorities may be overwhelmed in a catastrophe prompted “a fundamental change in military culture,” he said.
This comes despite the fact that the Posse Comitatus Act, passed all the way back in 1878 clearly and emphatically prohibits the use of American military forces in the United States as “law and order” forces in areas not already considered to be the property of the Federal Government.
The dangers of using military forces in areas that, by law and tradition, are the jurisdiction of domestic law enforcement should be manifest and, as Radley Balko predicts, it seems fairly clear that their role would, inevitably and inexorably, expand:
I predict that while now couched in terms of the necessity for a ready response to a cataclysmic terrorist attack, within five years there will be calls to use these forces for less urgent matters, such as crowd control at political conventions, natural disaster response, border control, and, inevitably, some components of the drug war (looking for marijuana in the national parks, for example).
Slowly but surely, the distinction between local, state, and federal law enforcement — all of which operate within limitations prescribed by the Constitution — and the military would be blurred.
From early days of the Republic, one of the greatest fears that the Founding Fathers had involved the creation of a standing army that would operate domestically in a manner that threatened the liberty of the people. Prior to the Civil War, that wasn’t a real concern because the standing army didn’t amount to very much. The passage of the Posse Comitatus Act sought to ensure that a larger Army would not become a threat to freedom.
Now, we’re on the verge of reversing 200 years of history.
There’s no real possibility that this new power won’t be abused.
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:07 am
I’m not blind to the concern here but this fails to alarm me as much as you seem to think it should. The troops we’re talking about are NBC control and cleanup specialists who possess skills and equipment that are not readily available to local emergency responders. Given that a nuclear or biological attack somewhere in the continental U.S. is likely to take place within the next five years, I’m kind of glad that at least some preparation is being made to deal with that.
Besides that, the troops are not “deployed” in the sense that they will be out and about and on patrol. They will be stationed in Colorado Springs. Clearly, we have good reason to be concerned if the military is deployed in peacetime within the country itself. But that’s not quite what’s going on here.
Rather, the Third Brigade’s mission will be to serve “an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.” That, by itself, is innocuous enough. “Stationed and ready to respond to a domestic crisis” is not the same thing as “on active duty, patrolling the streets of Topeka with AR-15s instead of local cops.” Had something like this been done before Katrina hit New Orleans, perhaps some emergency forces could have been deployed sooner and more lives could have been saved.
Also recall that when the Governor of a State requests assistance from the federal government in responding to a crisis, then there is no problem with Posse Comitatus and the Governor retains the right to request that the federal troops withdraw. Preparing the Third Brigade to respond to such a request does not obviate the need for the request to come in the first place. Governors have not been slow (with the notable exception of Louisiana’s Governor Landrieu after Katrina) to make those requests in times of need. In some other instances, the use of military forces within the country, even during peacetime, is necessary (famously as it was during integration of several southern schools and colleges in the 1960’s). Given the political reaction to Katrina, it’s hardly surprising that the government should consider taking steps like these. I’m actually a little bit disturbed at the implication that had there been a chemical weapons attack on civilians, there was no one at all who could respond to it with the right kinds of equipment and training.
There are other ways that these things could be done, in theory. But they are more expensive and money is very short right now. For instance, we could have elements of the various National Guards receiving training to do what the Third Brigade is already trained to do, and distribute equipment to the several national guards — in essence, creating smaller versions of the Third Brigade’s CCMURF functions around the country. Debatably, that might be more effective to help respond to a problem. But the cost involved in that, in money and time, would be significant. Maybe that’s the way to go in the long run, but we certainly can’t afford it now. Neither the Constitution nor the Posse Comitatus Act are suicide pacts, and we have to assume that our elected officials will respond intelligently to crises if and when they take place.
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:23 am
What could happen when the military handles domestic issues:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97546687