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Jewish World Review Sept. 28, 2005 / 24 Elul, 5765 Prez's actions could shake the Pentagon to its core By Tony Blankley
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
With the president's suggestion that the military should play a
bigger role in future major emergencies, he has set in motion a cascade of
policy shifts that, if reaching fruition, may shake the Pentagon to its
foundation and recast the lines both between the states and the federal
government, and between civil and military domestic jurisdictions. It might
not be too portentous to say that many serious people may see such a policy
shift as having constitutional implications.
On its face, the rightness of the idea seems obvious. In extreme
emergencies, state and local governments are not up to the task. Only the
federal government and, specifically, the military have the resources,
personnel and logistic capacity to act effectively.
In Katrina's aftermath, the president's critics (and many of his
friends) blamed him for not stepping in and taking command soon enough. But
if ever something were easier said than done — such prompt presidential
pre-emption would be it.
It is true that the Insurrection Act gives the president the
power to overrule governors and take military and economic command under
certain situations. But overriding an unwilling governor hasn't been done in
a half a century. And organizing the resources to make such action effective
will challenge historic principles of governance.
At the heart of such a reorganization lies the dual missions and
dual controls of the National Guard. Currently, the state guards are
commanded by the governors unless they are activated for military duty
abroad or federalized for domestic activity.
But if the several state guards are to be the president's
primary instrument for effective preemptive federal action, then their
doctrine, training and resource management would need to be within the
president's purview even on a regular basis — in order to be effective when
needed. The president cannot be expected to be responsible for their
performance if he is not responsible for their training and equipping.
Governors will resist giving up such day-to-day control.
At the same time that the Guards are more effectively trained
for such responsibilities (including duty in response to WMD terrorists
attacks), their ability to be simultaneously indoctrinated and trained to
their war fighting duties abroad will tend to be degraded. (e.g. Our
soldiers patrol rifles up in Fallujah, but rifles down in New Orleans.)
The regular active military, rightly or wrongly, has long
quietly believed that the Guards are not up to the active military's
standards. However, the Guard's able service and sacrifice in combat over
the generations is a source of justified pride — and the Guard, as an
institution, would fiercely resist the end or reduction of that proud
heritage.
If the Guard did become less likely to serve abroad, the active
military would be too small (without the Guard supplement) to carry out its
missions abroad. Thus, such a realignment would create pressure to increase
the size of the active forces.
The logic of a more robust and interventionist federal military
role in domestic emergencies may tend to evolve into the Guard becoming
something like a domestic army — perhaps commanded (when federalized) by
the recently created, currently soldierless, Northern Command — whose
somewhat ambiguous mission is to protect the country domestically from and
during terrorist attacks.
When in such a federalized status, what would be their
relationship to civilian federal agencies, state and local law enforcement
and first responders? Would, for example, the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) report in the chain of command to the federalized Guard if
the distribution of vaccines were in dispute between the Guard general and
the secretary of HHS? Or would the president have to personally intervene to
resolve such disputes between legal equals at a moment when minutes and
hours may make a strategic difference?
At the state level, would local police, state troopers, firemen,
ambulance drivers, etc. be federalized along with the Guard? Would governors
and mayors want that? And if not, would we run the risk of disputes between
the two forces (such as whether to force at gunpoint homeowners to leave
their homes, as happened in New Orleans — where the Army refused to carry
out the mayor's orders to force evacuation).
Meanwhile, the domestic implications of a national guard force
trained and indoctrinated to domestic interventions at the discretion of a
more interventionist-minded president is discordant with American traditions
that go back to our revolutionary days. Fear of a standing army was
memorialized in the third amendment, which bars the quartering of troops in
private homes even during war unless prescribed by law.
The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 debarred the military, with a
few exceptions, from acting as a domestic law enforcement agency. The
American military establishment has long been committed to both the letter
and the spirit of that act — and has resisted any domestic law enforcement
assignments.
Notwithstanding these and other concerns, the mood on Capitol
Hill this week, if my Hill sources are accurate, is that for different
reasons, the Senate may be prepared to legislatively authorize changes.
While legislative details have not been formalized yet,
Republicans may be inclined to support the president's initiative, while
Democrats seem to think that somehow such changes will compromise troop
strength in Iraq and lead to an earlier withdrawal. Personally, I rather
doubt the president intends to lower such troop levels until we have
success.
But such is the odd mood in Washington at the moment, that both
Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, for different reasons, may support
the president's initiative.
However the Republican House may, in this instance, play the
Senate's traditional role of the saucer that lets the legislative brew cool
before being voted on.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Tony Blankley is editorial page editor of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.
© 2005, Creators Syndicate |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
