Case in point. NorthCom has now fielded a single brigade combat team.
OK. So the guvmint now has some troops here in CONUS. Big deal. Do you think that this unit is going to be able to do anything of note?
Jeez Louise folks, we can't even manage pacify a pissant country like Iraq with 4+ combat divisions and more mercenaries than you can shake a stick at. We are supposed to be afraid of a single 5,000 member group that is made up of good god-fearing rednecks like the rest of us?
I think that we ought to keep things in perspective here folks. This is most likely not a big deal and I doubt if the troops in the 3rd would allow themselves to be used to repress anything here in the States.
Keep you powder dry and worry about the important shit.
_end_
7 comments:
I agree mostly with you. I am also an active duty member of the military. I would give the military as a whole a 40%-60% in which side they choose (40 worse case, 60 best). I know many, many members of the armed forces who are truly liberal and many more who are not but would not go against their pension and retirement. Then there are those like me. A Mech Infantry Brigade consists of at least 4 Battalions each with 3 companies of Bradleys with 25mm, TOWS,M240C coax Javelins, M249 and M240B plus their personal weapons. Not to mention the specialty platoons like Scouts, Mortars and UAS. Highly trained in dismounted infantry tactics and CQB. I see it as a real danger. But I am less worried about them then I am the precedence that such a thing sets. It is the start of a police state in my mind. One Brigade today, two tomorrow and so on until military presence is common place in the U.S. That is what I fear... the above is a light overview for a Brigade that does not include Air assets, now imagine a division. That is my issue my friend. Is my fear misplaced, maybe, but then again, maybe not.
Oh and I forgot to mention, one of those Battalions is heavy Armor BN, complete with the M1A2 Abrams and all the goodies....
Ghost:
Good to hear from you. I guess that what I am trying to say is that I would be a lot more concerned if they began to recruit and stage diffuse MP or psyop units than combat teams.
A heavy infantry brigade is a pretty damn blunt instrument to use against domestic insurgencies. IMHO, if they were foolish enough to deploy and use such a unit in CONUS, the reaction in the general populace would nearly assure a general insurrection and, more importantly, it would probably elicit serious pushback from the rank and file of the military to be used in such a manner.
I am a very old soldier now, my AD days are long behind me. But I have always felt that the great majority of military personnel take their oath to
"support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic
Yeah I know that there is another line about obeying the president and the chain of command. But I have always felt that the truths were able to come to the right conclusion about the precedence of oath.
I feel ya... and definitely agree.
I really like what rogue ghost has to say in that it's the PRECEDENT that scares me. Oh, and those "PAIN RAY" vehicles. :)
-just an old jarhead.
This is interesting subject. I am going to post another response to keep it going. I am not being disparaging here, I think that there are some good points being made by folks and I want to keep them going.
Just for the sake of argument, lets look at things a bit differently.
Since the second world war, we have had a minimum of six combat divisions stationed in the CONUS. Fort Hood, Fort Polk, Fort Stewart, Fort Riley, Fort Lewis, Fort Irwin, Fort Bragg, and any number of other forts have hosted full combat divisions.
Now, because a single brigade has been posted to a different command, folks are concerned. I don't know if this concern is warranted.
Should the powers that be use this brigade as a means of suppression is up to question. I would tend to think that they will follow the mission profile of disaster relief as advertised.
What worries me instead is the things that we don't know about. NORTHCOM is public knowledge. I am more concerned about some tangled alphabet of a command hidden inside the pentagon that no one knows about.
I would strongly recommend forks reading an old novel from the fifties named "Seven Days in May". Good movie too.
The difference in my eyes of having the Divisions and all the high speed goodies stationed in the U.S. is that before they were subject to Posse Comatatis. This as most should know was a law created after the Civil War to prevent the kind of military martial status of the Reformation. So now that an Executive Order from Bush does away with Posse Comatatis and we now have a Brigade whose sole purpose is to provide for disaster relief and respond to a very broad blanket statement of "Civil Unrest". I for one fully believe that there are many, many commands "hidden" from public view and certain initiatives that exist without our knowledge. Just look at the Stealth Fighters and Bombers as well as Special Operations Group Detachment Delta (Delta Force) all of which we now know exist but only recently did we actually find out that they really did. Anyone who has prior military experience knows that there are huge amounts of information left out in OPORDERs and taskings. Missions that we conduct without knowing exactly what it is we are doing or why. Just a thought.
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