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The Posse
Comitatus Act must not be changed, but many U.S. policies must
be, or the U.S. and Americans will not be protected
Pres. George W. Bush suggested the U.S.
military should be authorized to co-ordinate responses to
emergencies, such as hurricanes and should have a part, within
the U.S., in police activities to prevent terrorism.
The president’s suggestion is as
misguided as is his foreign policy. Safe responses to
emergencies within the U.S. include complete civilian control
and preventing the military from engaging in police
activities. Improving security for the U.S. and its citizens
requires major changes to U.S. foreign policy.
The U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, a
civilian agency, is currently responsible for coordinating
responses to emergencies. It did a bad job, during recent
hurricane disasters, but has the potential to do good response
co-ordination, if properly funded and not directed by
political hacks.
Response to emergencies within the U.S.
would be better, if Congress and Pres. Bush ensured that the
U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security is competent to respond
promptly and appropriately. If the agency is to accomplish
this, it must also be headed by qualified persons, and not by
unqualified political friends of the U.S. president,
politicians, or political contributors.
The U.S. military is currently banned
from taking part in arrests, searches, evidence seizure and
other police-type activities, within the U.S. The June 18,
1878 law that bans it is the Posse Comitatus Act. (The U.S.
Coast Guard and National Guard personnel, when controlled by
state governors, are not included in the act.) The law was
championed by southern legislators that had experienced, until
1876, occupation and law enforcement by the U.S. military.
In 1876, southern legislators, all
Democrats, had allowed congressional Republicans to disqualify
some Democratic electors to the Electoral College, so the
Republican candidate would be elected the next U.S.
president. In return, Republicans, who controlled the
Congress, ended the military occupation of former Confederate
states. Once that happened, elected representatives of all
former Confederate states again sat in the U.S. Congress and
were a force strong enough to help to enact the law.
The act reflects the bitter experience
and feelings engendered in much of the U.S. because of the
U.S. military’s role during Lincoln’s War and the years after
it. One reason for the bitter feelings was the U.S.
military’s arrest, during that war, in states that remained
within the U.S., of 36,000 U.S. citizens, and the imprisonment
of them without trials, or after military trials. The
imprisoned persons were men that opposed Lincoln’s War, or did
not speak in favor of it.
A second reason was the U.S. military’s
deliberate and eager destruction, during Lincolns War, of
non-combatant, civilian Confederate society, as a way to
defeat Confederate armies it could not defeat in battle.
A third reason was the occupation, by the
U.S. military, of the former Confederate states, after
Lincoln’s War. During that time, (referred to in U.S. school
and reference works as “The Reconstruction Period”) the U.S.
military protected and enabled unscrupulous Republicans from
the northern U.S. states and some native southerners to rule
the former Confederacy and steal through taxation, what the
U.S. military had not deliberately destroyed during the war.
Those that oppose allowing the U.S.
military to have a part in policing the U.S. know that the
U.S. military is the agency that instructs the military
establishments of foreign dictators in ways to torture
prisoners. It has a long history of this in Central America
and now teaches its lessons elsewhere in the world. Prisoner
abuse, in Iraq and the U.S. Naval Base, at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, have been mild compared with what is done elsewhere, by
U.S.-allied militaries, in third world and developing nations.
Another danger signal is an imbalance of
political views in the U.S. military. In 1975, U.S. military
officers were divided equally between Republicans and
Democrats. A 1999 report, by a consortium of North Carolina
universities reported finding that Republican officers, in the
U.S. military, now outnumber Democrats by eight to one. It
further found that, “Elite military officers have largely
abandoned political neutrality”, which was previously in U.S.
history, a U.S. military tradition.
These elite officers are no longer
neutral politically. They have negative views of elected
civilian leaders and a large majority of them think the
military could help to create a moral U.S. society.
These views are the same as those held by
the elite officers corps of South American, whom many the U.S.
officers know from their years with U.S. military missions
training elite South American officers. (Remember the U.S.
military’s military friends in Argentina and Chile and of the
torture and disappearance of tens of thousands of civilian
youth and political opponents in those countries, when the
military ruled.)
These elite officers are a part of Pres.
G. W. Bush’s loyal-voter base and a reason why so many of his
policy speeches are given to carefully chosen military
personnel.
In 1993, the nation saw, at the siege of
the Branch Dravidians religious compound, at Waco, Texas, a
result of U.S. military “advisors”, coaching the FBI and U.S.
Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms besiegers. The siege
was ended when they attacked and caused the deaths of 86
Branch Dravidians, including men, women and 17 children.
The men that wrote the U.S. Constitution
feared a politically active military. The framers of the
Posse Comitatus Act feared participation in law enforcement by
the U.S. military. They knew their history and were aware
that every military establishment is a constant threat to
representative democracy. For that reason, they placed the
military under the president, as a partial safeguard. They
also ensured that the U.S. military was extremely tiny, during
peacetime.
Today, the U.S. military is larger that
the militaries of most other nations combined. It is, like
all militaries, prepared to fight wars. Like all militaries,
it is unable to fight terrorism. Despite this, Pres. Bush and
some Congressional leaders want to amend the Posse Comitatus
Act to enable the U.S. military and its
anti-representative-government officers to have a hand in
policing the U.S.
The Congress must continue to forbid the
U.S. military to have any part in co-ordinating responses to
national disasters, or to take any part in arrests, searches,
evidence seizure and other police-type activities, within the
U.S. It should also act on the generally accepted fact that
conventional military forces have limited uses as
anti-terrorist fighters. It should, therefore, reduce the
size of the U.S. military to a level that will enable it to
fight only one major, conventional war at a time.
As the U.S. military’s size is reduced,
the number of foreign U.S. military bases and stations should
also be reduced. In addition, the use of U.S. taxes to make
foreign military grants and to fund U.S. military advisory
groups in many foreign countries should be ended. Instead,
U.S. civilians should be used as U.S. anti-terrorist advisors,
in foreign countries. Anti-terrorist civilian advisors
should be used only when their advice is absolutely
necessary. At all times the Congress should ensure the
civilian advisors are subject to closer oversight and control
by them than is the U.S. military.
Reducing the size of the military and
closing bases overseas would save the U.S. taxpayers trillions
of dollars. These savings could be used for deficit
reduction—and to reduce the extremely high federal tax burden
on middle-income taxpayers.
The Congress should spend one of its
breaks studying where U.S. interests warrant activism. They
now use their session breaks to campaign and solicit campaign
funds “back home”. Prioritizing U.S. interests should then
enable the Congress to prevent heavy-handed, U.S., greed or
paranoia-driven intervention elsewhere in the world. It
should also ensure an end to the use of threats of violence
and economic coercion in dealings with foreign countries when
U.S. physical security is not involved.
In order to use a cleanser on America’s
public face, both Pres. Bush and Vice Pres. Cheney should end
their custom of fabricating lies to justify the invasion of
other countries and then telling more lies to try to cover up
their earlier lies. Presidential lying about U.S. motives for
the overthrow of other governments, and terrorist activities
by covert U.S.-directed operatives is tradition that goes back
to Lincoln, and continues almost unbroken up to this time. It
is, however, time to end this tradition.
Pres. Bush and Congress could improve
U.S. security by reducing the budget deficit. Reducing
military spending for troops and bases would be a start.
Ending U.S. tax funding for NASA and aerospace research would
increase the tax savings. NASA and aerospace research produce
no goods for sale in competitive markets, and exist only
create profits for major corporations and employment for
relatively few people. Ending these programs would save
trillions of tax dollars and enable more deficit reduction and
more cuts in the tax bite the U.S. takes from middle-income
taxpayers. That would make more money available for private
investment and saving.
Generous and continuous U.S. funding
should also be given to teach birth control to poor
populations in third world countries, so their birth rates
will stabilize or drop. This would enable those countries to
improve their economies and increase per capita income. This
would reduce the number of people trying to immigrate legally
and illegally to the U.S. Pres. Bush’s policy of forbidding
the use of U.S. funds to teach birth control in third world
countries and his refusal to enforce U.S. immigration laws is
a cause of the tidal wave of illegal immigration now
inundating the U.S.
If these suggestions are implemented,
Americans will be freer and better off at home. However, the
anti-U.S. feeling in the Moslem world will not abate, until
the U.S. stops backing unrepresentative Arab governments and
ensures the Palestinians are treated fairly. Withdrawing
support for unrepresentative Arab states must be done
carefully, as Americans would be most unhappy, if the U.S.’s
petroleum supply became inadequate. However, it must be
started and progress must be made at a noticeable pace, even
if it is only in one Arab country at a time.
The unfair treatment of Palestinians, by
Israel, causes major loathing of the U.S. by Moslems and
ensures a continual flow of recruits to kill U.S. forces and
those associated with them. The U.S., which is Israel’s
international support, can end most Moslem hatred of it
quickly, by opposing Israel’s destruction of the Palestinians;
forcing Israel’s withdrawal completely from the West Bank and
the removal of its wall from around the West Bank; and forcing
Israel to restore to the Palestinian Authority all land taken,
from Palestine, in violation of the U.N. partitioning decision
that created Israel.
Pres. Bush’s multiple standards show
clearly in his silence about Israel’s nuclear weapons and
weapons’ grade fuel production, while he threatens, lectures,
and tries to isolate Iran, because Iran wants to develop
nuclear power for peaceful purposes. This is transparent
hypocrisy and is wins no friends internationally. It is,
therefore, counter-productive for U.S. homeland security.
The difficulty in reforming the one-sided
U.S. policy that favors Israel is that every elected U.S.
official that has advocated it has been the target of attacks
and replacement. U.S. and foreign Zionists have repeatedly
demonstrated their unhindered ability to intervene in the
U.S. electoral process to defeat anyone that advocates ending
the U.S.’s one-sided support for Israel. In order to change
this situation, Americans must be willing advocate this
change; speak against those that oppose it; and support any
politician brave enough to advocate a U.S. Mid-eastern policy
independent of Israel’s. Right now, U.S. politician fear to
do so, for fear of Zionist machinations against them.
Until the policies discussed here are
changed, there can be no real U.S. security, except through
constant war abroad and restriction of freedom at home. In
the meanwhile, Pres. Bush seems intent on actions and
inactions that perpetuate the threats to Americans’ security
internationally and reduce their freedom at home.
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