Martial Law Threat is Real
by Dave Lindorff
Commons Dreams, July 29, 2007
Global Research, http://globalresearch.ca/
The looming collapse of the US military
in Iraq, of which a number of generals and former generals, including
former Chief of Staff Colin Powell, have warned, is happening
none too soon, as it my be the best hope for preventing military
rule here at home.
From the looks of things, the Bush/Cheney
regime has been working assiduously to pave the way for a declaration
of military rule, such that at this point it really lacks only
the pretext to trigger a suspension of Constitutional government.
They have done this with the active support of Democrats in Congress,
though most of the heavy lifting was done by the last, Republican-led
Congress.
The first step, or course, was the first
Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed in September 2001,
which the president has subsequently used to claim Ðimproperly,
but so what? Ðthat the whole world, including the US, is a
battlefield in a so-called "War" on Terror, and that
he has extra-Constitutional unitary executive powers to ignore
laws passed by Congress. As constitutional scholar and former
Reagan-era associate deputy attorney general Bruce Fein observes,
that one claim, that the US is itself a battlefield, is enough
to allow this or some future president to declare martial law,
since you can always declare martial law on a battlefield. All
he'd need would be a pretext, like another terrorist attack inside
the U.S..
The 2001 AUMF was followed by the PATRIOT
Act, passed in October 2001, which undermined much of the Bill
of Rights. Around the same time, the president began a campaign
of massive spying on Americans by the National Security Agency,
conducted without any warrants or other judicial review. It was
and remains a program that is clearly aimed at American dissidents
and at the administration's political opponents, since the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court would never have raised no objections
to spying on potential terrorists. (And it, and other government
spying programs, have resulted in the government's having a list
now of some 325,000 "suspected terrorists"!)
The other thing we saw early on was the
establishment of an underground government-within-a-government,
though the activation, following 9-11, of the so-called "Continuity
of Government" protocol, which saw heads of federal agencies
moved secretly to an underground bunker where, working under the
direction of Vice President Dick Cheney, the "government"
functioned out of sight of Congress and the public for critical
months.
It was also during the first year following
9-11 that the Bush/Cheney regime began its programs of arrest
and detention without charge Ðmostly of resident aliens, but
also of American citizensÐand of kidnapping and torture in
a chain of gulag prisons overseas and at the Navy base at Guantanamo
Bay.
The following year, Attorney General John
Ashcroft began his program to develop a mass network of tens of
millions of citizen spiesÐOperation TIPS. That program, which
had considerable support from key Democrats (notably Sen. Joe
Lieberman), was curtailed by Congress when key conservatives got
wind of the scale of the thing, but the concept survives without
a name, and is reportedly being expanded today.
Meanwhile, last October Bush and Cheney,
with the help of a compliant Congress, put in place some key elements
needed for a military putsch. There was the overturning of the
venerable Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which barred the use of
active duty military inside the United States for police-type
functions, and the revision of the Insurrection Act, so as to
empower the president to take control of National Guard units
in the 50 states even over the objections of the governors of
those states.
Put this together with the wholly secret
construction now under way-courtesy of a $385-million grant by
the US Army Corps of Engineers to Halliburton subsidiary KBR Inc-of
detention camps reportedly capable of confining as many as 400,000
people, and a recent report that the Pentagon has a document,
dated June 1, 2007, classified Top Secret, which declares there
to be a developing "insurgency" within the U.S., and
which lays out a whole martial law counterinsurgency campaign
against legal dissent, and you have all the ingredients for a
military takeover of the United States.
As we go about our daily lives-our shopping,
our escapist movie watching, and even our protesting and political
organizingÐwe need to be aware that there is a real risk that
it could all blow up, and that we could find ourselves facing
armed, uniformed troops at our doors.
Bruce Fein isn't an alarmist. He says
he doesn't see martial law coming tomorrow. But he is also realistic.
He says, This is all sitting around like a loaded gun waiting
to go off. I think the risk of martial law is trivial right now,
but the minute there is a terrorist attack, then it is real. And
it stays with us after Bush and Cheney are gone, because terrorism
stays with us forever. (It may be significant that Hillary Clinton,
the leading Democratic candidate for president, has called for
the revocation of the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force
against Iraq, but not of the earlier 2001 AUMF which Bush claims
makes him commander in chief of a borderless, endless war on terror.)
Indeed, the revised Insurrection Act (10.
USC 331-335) approved by Congress and signed into law by Bush
last October, specifically says that the president can federalize
the National Guard to suppress public disorder in the event of
national disorder, epidemic, other serious public health emergency,
terrorist attack or incident. That determination, the act states,
is solely the president's to make. Congress is not involved.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chair of the
Senate Judiciary Committee, has added an amendment to the upcoming
Defense bill, restoring the Insurrection Act to its former versionÐa
move that has the endorsement of all 50 governors-but Fein argues
that would not solve the problem, since Bush still claims that
the U.S. is a battlefield. Besides, a Leahy aide concedes that
Bush could sign the next Defense Appropriations bill and then
use a signing statement to invalidate the Insurrection Act rider.
Fein argues that the only real defense
against the looming disaster of a martial law declaration would
be for Congress to vote for a resolution determining that there
is no War on terror. But they are such cowards they will never
do that, he says.
That leaves us with the military.
If ordered to turn their guns and bayonets
on their fellow Americans, would our "heroes" in uniform
follow their consciences, and their oaths to "uphold and
defend" the Constitution of the United States? Or would they
follow the orders of their Commander in Chief?
It has to be a plus that National Guard
and Reserve units are on their third and sometimes fourth deployments
to Iraq, and are fuming at the abuse. It has to be a plus that
active duty troops are refusing to re-enlist in droves Ðespecially
mid-level officers.
If we are headed for martial law, better
that it be with a broken military. Maybe if it's broken badly
enough, the administration will be afraid to test the idea.
Dave Lindorff's most recent book is "The
Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work
is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net.
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