Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security
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.
The Pentagon’s plan calls for three rapid-reaction forces to be ready for emergency response by September 2011. The first 4,700-person unit, built around an active-duty combat brigade based at Fort Stewart, Ga., was available as of Oct. 1, said Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., commander of the U.S. Northern Command.
I’m somewhat split in my thoughts about this. I do think we are woefully unprepared to meet certain threats, but on the other hand, massive increases in the domestic military power of the state aren’t necessarily the way I would go. I would like to see the ability of the citizenry to defend itself greatly expanded, for instance - armed pilots, universal shall-issue concealed carry, an end to laws banning “assault weapons,” would go a long way towards armoring our society against the types of atrocities that occurred in Mumbai last week, for instance.
What concerns me the most, however, is what these federal military task forces are designed to actually do in the real world. Why do we need what is essentially a five-thousand-strong military SWAT team? What is it supposed to be deployed against? Does Washington envision multiple Mumbai-style attacks occurring simultaneously all over the country, in such strength that local police can’t handle them?
Possibly. “Multiple attacks” are mentioned as one of the situations these forces are specifically designed to handle, especially multiple WMD attacks. And I can envision the utility of rapid-response forces trained to deal with the results - the, um, fallout - of such attacks.
On balance, I think something like this is probably necessary. Only fools believe that because we have not been attacked, we won’t be attacked. And even an armed, alert citizenry is not proof against the EMP missile launched 300 miles off-shore, the nuke in a container on a freighter in Long Beach harbor, or the CBR attack on the New York subway system.
“This is a genuine recognition that this [job] isn’t something that you want to have a pickup team responsible for,” said Tussing, who has assessed the military’s homeland security strategies.
Much as I dislike expansions of state power, I think this is probably right.
And Cato Vice President Gene Healy warned of “a creeping militarization” of homeland security.
This also is worthy of consideration. But one of the things I have railed against for years is the fat, dumb, complacent view of much of America, especially on the left, and, unfortunately, on the libertarian right, that we aren’t in a war, we are only faced with a law enforcement problem.
This sort of idiotic viewpoint can only be sustained by ignoring what happened on September 11th, and then with great vigor pretending that what you ignore - or worse - can never happen again.
In times of war, we have expanded the powers of the state. Once the threat is dealt with, we tend to scale back those powers.
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