Pentagon Planning To Deploy 20,000 US Troops Domestically For Security Purposes
I have a big, big problem with this:
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.
I’m assuming that the law giving the President, and thus the Pentagon, the authority to do this is the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 which was signed into law by President Bush in October of 2006. I wrote about it back in 2006. At the time it was suggested that the President needed this power to react to natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina (prior to this law’s passage the President couldn’t deploy military forces domestically without consent of the state Governor in question).
I opposed that expansion of executive power then, and I oppose it now.
The Posse Comitatus and Insurrection Acts exist for a reason. America must have a clear definition between domestic law enforcement and the national military. Because while the idea of government using the military domestically for political ends may seem far-fetched right now, such problems come about slowly. Especially in liberal democracies such as ours.
In ancient times Roman soldiers would lay down their arms before crossing the Rubicon and became Roman citizens before entering their homeland. It wasn’t until Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his armies that Rome became an empire.
