As usual, the drive-by media has totally missed a statement by Barack Obama that should worry many. Luckily, Powerline has picked up on it. In a speech on July 2, Barack Obama stated:
We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.
Wow. A civilian national security force that is just as "powerful" and just as "strong" and just as "well-funded".
Why is that? Does the Federal Government not have enough "alphabet soup" agencies to meet the threats at a national security level? As anyone with two ears and brain knows, our failures in "national security" in the last twenty years have largely been the result of a lack of interagency cooperation, not the lack of agencies. In fact, the success of the 9/11 attackers can be directly traced to the "wall" put in place by Clinton Justice Official (and later Fannie Mae exec and 9/11 Commissioner) Jamie Gorelick, who determined that the FBI and CIA could not share information about terrorists who moved across the US border. And quite frankly, we have enough agencies to keep government printers busy for years as they change up their names and abbreviations.
Is this just another instance of the extreme left in this country arguing that the terrorist threat is a law enforcement issue and not a military issue? Or is something more sinister? In other words, is this a threat to our freedom through stupidity, or malice?
Before I answer that question, let me make a few points that are hopefully consistent with my previous scribblings on this blog.
1. It would be nice if the Federal Government (or any government at any level) could bring itself to enforce the laws already passed by Congress (or the related legislative body) that are already on the books through the agencies that already exist. For instance, if the United States Government could possibly bring itself to enforce the laws it insist it needs, illegal immigration would be a small nuisance, and not a major problem.
2. In a related point, the budget for the IRS to chase tax cheats is about three times the budget for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is charged with, among other things, counterintelligence operations within the borders of the United States of America. Tax evasion is wrong and is against the law, but obviously, things like terrorism are a bit more serious. It would be nice if the Federal Government could act in a way that actually demonstrates this. Especially since tax evasion could be largely wiped out by making the internal revenue code dramatically simpler and less complicated.
3. We should attack problems based on the nature of the problem, not on how we wish the problem was. Terrorists have made it perfectly clear that they consider their actions to be acts of war. They have been engaged in a war with us since at least 1979, when they committed an actual act of war by seizing sovereign US soil in Tehran. (You can bet your ass that if the College Republicans at Georgetown were rioting outside the Russian Embassy in Washington, DC, and suddenly stormed the gates, the Russian Air Force would be flying sorties over the North Pole.)
We need to stop pretending that these are just simple lawbreakers who can be brought to justice through our criminal courts system. Yes, we were succesful in prosecuting the Blind Sheikh and his followers for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. But let's not forget that his attorney Lynne Stewart was also convicted for acting as a messenger between him and his followers in Egypt.
So, to repeat the question... Is this just another instance of the extreme left in this country arguing that the terrorist threat is a law enforcement issue and not a military issue? Or is something more sinister?
I think it is a little of both. Senator Obama, as former Constitutional Law lecturer, is certainly aware that the Armed Forces of the United States cannot be used as police force within the borders of the United States absent certain extraordinary conditions, such as rebellion or the declaration of a national emergency, or when directly authorized by Congress. The law was changed in 2006, following the debacle of Hurricane Katrina, when Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco completely clusterfucked the operation of the Louisiana National Guard and the President was powerless to overrule her. However, those changes were repealed this year.
(Note: several readers of great historical knowledge will raise the Central High School and Oxford, Mississippi deployments of Federal Troops during the Civil Rights era. These were done under the Insurrection Act, as the governments of competent jurisdiction -- Arkansas and Mississippi -- had failed to enforce Federal law).
So, the good Senator cannot push for the abolition of posse comitatus without running up against one hundred years of solid Constitutional Law. Therefore, to achieve his desire for a "national police force", he needs a civilian agency.
The problem is, we are nation of sovereign states and a nation of laws. And our Supreme Law holds that the powers not expressly delegated to the Federal Government are left to the states, and to the people. And this is where is gets sinister.
Everyone who thinks such a civilian police force would be limited to "national security", please raise your hands? We have passed a lot of domestic policy under the guise of "national security": and very little of it has been good. In fact, this move is pretty damn Wilsonian. Let's not forget that during World War I, President Woodrow "I love the Klan!" Wilson deputized 100,000 Americans to root out all sorts of people under the guise of national security. The Palmer Raids terrorized half of America, while the other half was cowed into silence. Newspapers were shut down, books burned, speakers silenced, and critics jailed. And Woodrow Wilson was a liberal progressive!
All of this was done through the Espionage Act, passed in 1917. Like its predecessor Alien and Sedition Acts, the Act was widely applied to crush out any form of dissent that President Wilson found offensive. Today's radical left -- including the majority of Congressional Democrats, almost the entire news media, Cindy Sheehan, and so on -- would be in jail (or worse) right now, if President Bush had the power granted to Wilson under the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act. It's amazing that the President who pushed so hard to fight the war to "make the world safe for democracy" was crushing it at home.
We forget -- mostly because most people alive during World War I have long since passed on -- that the war was not as popular as history wants to remember it. Most Americans wanted nothing to do with yet another European Civil War, since most Americans at the time were Americans because they had fled a Europe that had not gone 25 years without a major war in a millenium. Wilson himself recognized this when he said:
Hyphenated Americans (who) have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life. Such creatures of passion, disloyalty and anarchy must be crushed out.
Wilson brought the full force of Federal Police Power -- including the nascent Bureau of Investigation (fore-runner of the FBI, under a young J. Edgar Hoover) to bear upon helpless citizens and residents who dared exercise their First Amendment rights to speak their mind, all in the name of "National Security".
Fast forward to a President Barack Obama. Michelle Obama has already given us a glimpse of what life might be like under a President Barry:
Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone . . . Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual - uninvolved, uninformed.
And now he calls for a large, powerful, well-funded "national security" civilian police force. In an age where nearly anything and everything gets lumped into the category of "national security" -- our Interstate Highway System, our energy supply, NASA, fuel efficient hybrid cars, the speed limit on our highways, global warming, and so on -- one can see the power that would be seized from the people by such a force to require us to work, and shed our cynicism, and put down our divisions. Don't want to go all Grizzly Adams, your friendly neighborhood National Security Policeman will be there to pull you out of your log cabin. Too friendly with your comfort zone, that teflon night stick will help. Just a little too comfortable in your life as it is? Assume the position.
I don't know about you, but I don't feel to secure about my nation when its prospective leaders feel the need to bring coercive police power to bear to get their points across.