Army deploys combat unit in US for possible civil unrest
By Bill Van Auken
25 September 2008
For the first time ever, the US military is deploying an active duty
regular
Army combat unit for full-time use inside the United States to deal with
emergencies, including potential civil unrest.
Beginning on October 1, the First Brigade Combat Team of the Third
Division
will be placed under the command of US Army North, the Army’s component
of
the Pentagon’s Northern Command (NorthCom), which was created in the wake
of
the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks with the stated mission of
defending the US “homeland” and aiding federal, state and local
authorities.
The unit—known as the “Raiders”—is among the Army’s most “blooded.” It
has
spent nearly three out of the last five years deployed in Iraq, leading
the
assault on Baghdad in 2003 and carrying out house-to-house combat in the
suppression of resistance in the city of Ramadi. It was the first brigade
combat team to be sent to Iraq three times.
While active-duty units previously have been used in temporary
assignments,
such as the combat-equipped troops deployed in New Orleans, which was
effectively placed under martial law in the wake of Hurricane Katrina,
this
marks the first time that an Army combat unit has been given a dedicated
assignment in which US soil constitutes its “battle zone.”
The Pentagon’s official pronouncements have stressed the role of
specialized
units in a potential response to terrorist attack within the US. Gen.
George
Casey, the Army chief of staff, attended a training exercise last week
for
about 250 members of the unit at Fort Stewart, Georgia. The focus of the
exercise, according to the Army’s public affairs office, was how troops
“might fly search and rescue missions, extract casualties and
decontaminate
people following a catastrophic nuclear attack in the nation’s heartland.”
“We are at war with a global extremist network that is not going away,”
Casey told the soldiers. “I hope we don’t have to use it, but we need the
capability.”
However, the mission assigned to the nearly 4,000 troops of the First
Brigade Combat Team does not consist merely of rescuing victims of
terrorist
attacks. An article that appeared earlier this month in the Army Times
(“Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1”), a publication that is widely
read
within the military, paints a different and far more ominous picture.
“They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control,”
the
paper reports. It quotes the unit’s commander, Col. Robert Cloutier, as
saying that the 1st BCT’s soldiers are being trained in the use of “the
first ever nonlethal package the Army has fielded.” The weapons, the
paper
reported, are “designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without
killing them.” The equipment includes beanbag bullets, shields and batons
and equipment for erecting roadblocks.
It appears that as part of the training for deployment within the US, the
soldiers have been ordered to test some of this non-lethal equipment on
each
other.
“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” Cloutier told the
Army
Times. He described the effects of the electroshock weapon as “your worst
muscle cramp ever—times 10 throughout your whole body.”
The colonel’s remark suggests that, in preparation for their “homefront”
duties, rank-and-file troops are also being routinely Tasered. The
brutalizing effect and intent of such a macabre training exercise is to
inure troops against sympathy for the pain and suffering they may be
called
upon to inflict on the civilian population using these same “non-lethal”
weapons.
According to military officials quoted by the Army Times, the deployment
of
regular Army troops in the US begun with the First Brigade Combat Team is
to
become permanent, with different units rotated into the assignment on an
annual basis.
In an online interview with reporters earlier this month, NorthCom
officers
were asked about the implications of the new deployment for the Posse
Comitatus Act, the 230-year-old legal statute that bars the use of US
military forces for law enforcement purposes within the US itself.
Col. Lou Volger, NorthCom’s chief of future operations, tried to downplay
any enforcement role, but added, “We will integrate with law enforcement
to
understand the situation and make sure we’re aware of any threats.”
Volger acknowledged the obvious, that the Brigade Combat Team is a
military
force, while attempting to dismiss the likelihood that it would play any
military role. It “has forces for security,” he said, “but that’s
really—they call them security forces, but that’s really just to
establish
our own footprint and make sure that we can operate and run our own
bases.”
Lt. Col. James Shores, another NorthCom officer, chimed in, “Let’s say
even
if there was a scenario that developed into a branch of a civil
disturbance—even at that point it would take a presidential directive to
even get it close to anything that you’re suggesting.”
Whatever is required to trigger such an intervention, clearly Col.
Cloutier
and his troops are preparing for it with their hands-on training in the
use
of “non-lethal” means of repression.
The extreme sensitivity of the military brass on this issue
notwithstanding,
the reality is that the intervention of the military in domestic affairs
has
grown sharply over the last period under conditions in which its
involvement
in two colonial-style wars abroad has given it a far more prominent role
in
American political life.
The Bush administration has worked to tear down any barriers to the use
of
the military in domestic repression. Thus, in the 2007 Pentagon spending
bill it inserted a measure to amend the Posse Comitatus Act to clear the
way
for the domestic deployment of the military in the event of natural
disaster, terrorist attack or “other conditions in which the president
determines that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state
officials cannot maintain public order.”
The provision granted the president sweeping new powers to impose martial
law by declaring a “public emergency” for virtually any reason, allowing
him
to deploy troops anywhere in the US and to take control of state-based
National Guard units without the consent of state governors in order to
“suppress public disorder.”
The provision was subsequently repealed by Congress as part of the 2008
military appropriations legislation, but the intent remains. Given the
sweeping powers claimed by the White House in the name of the “commander
in
chief” in a global war on terror—powers to suspend habeas corpus, carry
out
wholesale domestic spying and conduct torture—there is no reason to
believe
it would respect legal restrictions against the use of military force at
home.
It is noteworthy that the deployment of US combat troops “as an on-call
federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and
disasters”—in
the words of the Army Times—coincides with the eruption of the greatest
economic emergency and financial disaster since the Great Depression of
the
1930s.
Justified as a response to terrorist threats, the real source of the
growing
preparations for the use of US military force within America’s borders
lies
not in the events of September 11, 2001 or the danger that they will be
repeated. Rather, the domestic mobilization of the armed forces is a
response by the US ruling establishment to the growing threat to
political
stability.
Under conditions of deepening economic crisis, the unprecedented social
chasm separating the country’s working people from the obscenely wealthy
financial elite becomes unsustainable within the existing political
framework.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/mili-s25.shtml
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/mili-s25.shtml
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