Military Personnel Being Disarmed

Note- the terms "Base" and "Post"(not to be confused with a blog post) Naval and Army respectively, should be considered interchangeable.
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The shooting at the Washington DC Navy Yard brought yet another nagging thought of mine back to the fore.

The national (Our structure is actually not Federal and never was) government has been steadily pushing our military into a position of impotence (Unless it is being unleashed on a foreign power of course). In addition to being subjected to the agendas of radical gays and feminists, and atheists, our armed forces have been placed - to a great degree, under the control of civilian law enforcement authorities. When I was on active duty in the Marine Corps in the late 1980's, the only two civilian law enforcement agencies of which I knew was the Naval Investigative Service (NIS) and the Department of Defense (DOD)Police . This former handled criminal matters that warranted investigations of criminal cases that went past the levels normally handled my military law enforcement and the latter seemed to be tasked with base security where there was no military police unit of appreciable size. At the time, I only saw DOD police on Army posts Even then, I was not pleased with this arrangement; the US military has always had a multi-level system of  well-trained and qualified members that policed the ranks more than well enough. At the time, though, I contented myself with the notion that these civilians were useful for matters that may include civilians that may have been involved with crimes on, or otherwise associated with, military bases.

Since I have not followed the agency since I left the Marines, I cannot say for certain how much their mission has changed, but the   NIS of today appears to have their hands in all sorts of operations:

http://www.ncis.navy.mil/Pages/publicdefault.aspx

After my honorable discharge and subsequent time in the Army national Guard in the early 1990's (The Clinton era), I began to notice, particularly on Army posts, the increase in the amount of DOD police. It was then that I began to wonder what was being done with the military police units; it was if (In flora and fauna terms) they were disappearing like a native species being displaced by a new invasive species.

Today, the military police of out military has been relegated to, at best, a secondary status. In the Fort Hood Terrorist (Obama's "workplace violence)" attack by Major Nadal Hasan, it was a DOD police officer who first returned fire - I don't know of military police had been completely removed from the post, severely reduced in strength, or had been restricted from responding to a violent crime, but again my hackles were raised - something was wrong.

The details about who actually shot and killed the shooter, Aaron Alexis, n Washington DC today, are still murky. All I have been able to gather is that he was killed by police. I don't know if these were Washington DC Metropolitan, DOD, or Military Police, but what is clear is this:

The Navy Yard, like all US military bases, is a gun free zone (Does anyone notice that shooters like gun free zones for slaughters?) , non-police military personnel are strictly prohibited from being armed, and no military police personnel appear to have been present. Armed response may have been only from civilian police and, after orders were approved, the Marine Corps barracks personnel from nearby Headquarters Marine Corps.

Today I thought about another piece of the puzzle of the big picture. This the neutering of our military and its personnel in the face of an ever-growing threat of national and other police that operate under the umbrella (including Task Forces) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). If our military is not actively engaged in combat operations (away from home), it can now barely do anything to protect its own personnel and others on a military base.

I  have little doubt that this is no accident - the military is being rendered utterly unable to protect the People in the event that the Hydra that is DHS and its attached agencies/task forces are used to put down an uprising (even a peaceful one like the beginning of Obama's celebrated :Arab Spring") of the People against a government that is unrecognizable to one who adheres to our Constitution.

I have been on active and reserve military duty and am a retired law enforcement officer. I can assure you that military personnel consider themselves more like the People than do many cops. The latter are much more likely to have an "us against them" mindset than members of our military.

Excerpts from a previous post:

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/08/retired-marine-colonel-on.html

The militarization of police, at all levels of government, in the United States is certainly an issue of great concern. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 effectively prohibited US military personnel from being employed to enforce criminal/civil law within the nation. Federal troops can be deployed in situations in which a state of emergency has been  declared, such as with the Los Angeles riots of 1992, but these are to be used in a support status and coordinated with civil authorities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

Law enforcement personnel, including those under the supervision pf the Department of Homeland Security (a body seemingly growing in scope and authority by the day), are in contrast specifically charged with the task of enforcing the Law. Historically, these agencies were not well-equipped to handle situations such as barricaded suspects. Enter the SWAT team; the officers units had training and equipment that would enable them to do what the officer on standard patrol duty could not.

After being honorably discharged from the Marine Corps and being hired by a local law enforcement agency, I served on my agency's SWAT team from the early to late 90's. During that period, I noted that our equipment, training, and structure was becoming quite militarized. We also began to acquire equipment and training from the Federal government. A change in mindset accompanied this development. Officers who had never served in the military started to labor under the impression that their level of training not only approached* (Which was not even close) but surpassed that of actual military personnel. One in particular had big plans - he had designs to make his unit "....better than the SEALS". That claim left me utterly speechless. I mean, he just no clue whatsoever.

The response to the Columbine slaughter exemplified both the drawbacks of overt militarization of our cops and the fact that cops simply do not think like soldiers do. Waiting for backup and the arrival of sufficient numbers if SWAT personnel to conduct a textbook SWAT  operation, the responding patrol and later SWAT officers waited - for a very long time, while students were being killed and. Once enough arrived to do things "by the book", they crept through the school ever-so-slowly while severely injured students went without medical attention. To them, every nook and cranny needed to be cleared before the unit moved to the next room or hallway.

Militarily personnel are trained with a Mission First -Troops Second mentality, cops are not. An infantry unit, if given the order, will attempt to accomplish the mission with the troops and and equipment available at the time. They will move through hostile forces if need be. Police dogma does not even come close to this. 

SWAT teams do not have the same level of training as do military personnel, but they think that they are actually more highly trained, and that its frightening.

Also frightening is the fact that, as the Colonel noted, police agencies are not only acquiring armored vehicles and other types of equipment that one would expect to see at a military base, it is also standardized, often down to the same exact model. With the streamlining of Emergency Incident Response procedures and Mutual Aid agreements, it is guaranteed that officers can be detached and and reassigned to units comprised of officers from other agencies quite seamlessly. In a scenario in which the People are being targeted for standing  up for their rights, officers would not even have the advantage of working with officers with whom they are familiar, something which often provides a natural "braking mechanism" when given orders that are problematic. Old friends have ways of letting their partners know that they see something wrong without saying a word - a good start if officers need to decide on their own to "stand down".

When equipment is issued or subsidized at state or national level, local agencies are obligated by contract to dispatch that equipment, along with trained officers, to large-scale events. These are referred to as "Task Forces". Several  cops from your town or county could be away for days or weeks at a time. Following September 11th, officers from across the nation were assigned to and received training for a rapid reaction force, the name of which escapes me at the moment, for deployment to emergencies anywhere in the state or nation. Jurisdictional authority would be provided simply for "swearing in" the responding offers to give them powers of arrest in that state. They were used in events such as Katrina, but an "emergency" is subject to interpretation, and your officers could well be two or more thousand miles away dealing with a body of Americans who are standing up for their rights.

The Colonel was correct in noting that the Federal Government is effectively creating an army that is not restricted by the Posse Comitatus Act, which brings me to the most frightening part:

In order for military units to go into action, be it to destroy an opposing force, suppress a movement of the People, or prevent a necessary movement of the People from being suppressed, a tremendous amount of steps need to be followed. Orders must be given to all combat and support units. This includes issuing of operation orders, weapons, transportation, equipment, fuel and other necessities. A military unit, even if its command staff and troops know that something is dreadfully wrong and that action must be taken, is almost powerless to act if an order has not been sent via the chain of command. Virtually an entire battalion of staff officers has to be of the same mind in order for such an act to have a chance of happening. A smaller unit attempting such a move will see its officers relieved of command and detained and the troops confined to barracks - prohibited of course from any contact outside of the base or post.

In a similar scenario involving the dispatch of police forces, it is far easier. Police agencies have their equipment on hand, and their operational procedures are much more conducive to an immediate deployment at the word of a Chief or other superior officer. Federal and State agencies are massive in size and have sufficient assets to operate for weeks. The mind-boggling amount of ammunition that has been purchased and stored across the nation by the Department of Homeland Security allows for an almost unlimited supply. Add the call for to-be-attached officers from local agencies with their issued equipment, and the new army, which takes its orders from Civil authorities, is a tool that can be wielded in an unchecked  manner against the People. When the cops are told that the targets are in violation of the Law, their minds are geared towards making arrests. They also have not been educated to appreciate their mission to protect the People, Constitution, and the nation as have military personnel. I was in both worlds, and I can assure you that the mindset is as different as can be.