A Homeland Is a Country That Allows Domestic Use of Military
by DavidSwanson
WashingtonsBlog.com
January 11, 2016
Have you seen Dahr Jamail’s report on U.S. military plans for war games in Washington state? I’m sure some observers imagine that the military is simply looking for a place to engage in safe and responsible and needed practice in hand-to-hand combat against incoming North Korean nuclear missiles, or perhaps to rehearse a humanitarian invasion of Russia to uphold the fundamental international law against Vladimir Putin’s existence.
But if you look over the history of domestic use of the U.S. military — such as by reading the new book Soldiers on the Home Front: The Domestic Role of the American Military — it’s hard not to wonder whether, from the U.S. military’s point of view, at least a side benefit of the coming war game isn’t rehearsing for the next time citizens in kayaks interfere with a corporation intent on poisoning the earth’s climate with fossil fuels.
Soldiers on the Home Front is almost rah-rah enthusiastic in its support for the U.S. military: “Our task here is to celebrate the U.S. military’s profound historical and continuing contribution to domestic tranquility, while at the same time … .” Yet it tells a story of two centuries of the U.S. military and state militias and the National Guard being used to suppress dissent, eliminate labor rights, deny civil liberties, attack Native Americans, and abuse African Americans. Even the well-known restrictions on military use put into law and often ignored — such as the Posse Comitatus Act — were aimed at allowing, not preventing, the abuse of African Americans. The story is one of gradually expanding presidential power, both in written law and in practice, with the latter far outpacing the former.
The Rest…HERE
