Just one opinion, FWIW:
THE WESTERN FRONT
The Posse Comitatus Problem
An 1878 anti-Reconstruction law makes it harder to fight terror.
BY BRENDAN MINITER
Monday, August 12, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT
Some folks just have their minds made up. George W. Bush, John Ashcroft and probably the whole administration want nothing more than to set up a police state in America. They believed this before Osama bin Laden attacked New York and Washington, and their fears have driven a lot of the criticism of the war since it began. We've had panicked complaints of "secret" arrests, and hysterical commentators even compared Mr. Bush's proposed volunteer program to report suspicious activity to the East German secret police.
So it's not surprising that the mere suggestion that the military play a larger role in fighting terrorism on the home front drew a tepid endorsements from top lawmakers and outright criticism from certain quarters in the press.
The issue here is the Posse Comitatus Act, which Congress enacted in 1878 as part of the backlash against Reconstruction. Southern politicians objected to more than a decade of soldiers policing their states, and the act bars the Army, and by extension the Air Force, from performing a host of domestic law-enforcement duties. As a matter of policy, the government extends its provisions to the Navy and the Marine Corps as well. The exception is the Coast Guard, which has performed some police functions since 1790.
Homeland Security Advisor Tom Ridge brought the issue to the public's attention by suggesting Congress consider relaxing some of the restrictions. And he was right to do so. We're at war, fighting an army of enemy soldiers who disguise themselves as civilians. This enemy uses our civilian infrastructure for transportation, access to civilian targets and as weapons against us. So why can't we find reasonable ways to employ our military to interdict, engage and even defeat this enemy on the domestic front?
That's a question the opposition really can't answer. "At bottom, we as a country have an allergy to the idea that military personnel should function as police officers," wrote Eugene Fidell, head of the National Center for Military Justice, a Virginia-based private-sector think tank, in the Boston Globe. Sens. Carl Levin and Joe Biden, chairmen of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, hedged their bets by agreeing to consider changing the law while saying they didn't expect that a significant change would be necessary. Mr. Ridge also played both sides of the fence by suggesting that Congress review the act, while simultaneously saying an extensive rethinking of the military's role would not be necessary.
Too bad, for what we really need on this issue is direct leadership. It's easy for politicians to posture around a proposal until someone makes the facts plain. What we need to know is how would this administration use the military on the domestic front, given the chance.
We need look no further than the U.S. Marine Corps. Since Sept. 11 the Bush administration has turned a trivial six-man experimental program begun under the Clinton administration into a muscular effort to combat terrorism. The program is a joint effort between the Coast Guard and the Marines to defend domestic and foreign ports as well as naval bases.
Of course, the Posse Comitatus Act still stands, so Marines won't be patrolling American ports. Instead the Marine Corps is making training facilities, techniques and equipment available. The Coast Guard is now using these resources to train Maritime Safety Security Teams--the course for which was conceived and developed since January.
Much of the training will take place at the Camp Lejeune, N.C. Officials at this Marine Corps facility recently dedicated a building as the Coast Guard Special Missions Training Center. Already this year the new program has trained nearly 100 Coast Guardsmen in antiterrorism techniques, scores of others in similarly specialized training and 200 in port security procedures. An additional 200 men and women are currently training at the facility for port security assignments.
"It is not necessarily a new mission, but there is a heightened priority, especially since Sept. 11," Coast Guard Cmdr. Fred White said at the dedication. "This represents a huge change and puts our operation on the map."
"We had to get the weapons, train the people, set up the ports and buy the boats all in a matter of six months," Cmdr. White said. "That's lightning fast for the federal government."
It's also sensible. The Coast Guard has long fought alongside Marines. The boats patrolling rivers in Vietnam were piloted by Coast Guardsmen. In World War II, Coast Guard coxswains drove the landing craft that carried Marine invasion forces island hopping across the Pacific. Fighting terrorists is, of course, different from battling uniformed soldiers. But the Marines have been training to identify, engage and defeat a foe that hides among civil populations for more than a decade. Capitalizing on this resource by pairing the Coast Guard with the Marines is the kind of thinking we need to win this war.
Right now, as we debate such measures, enemy combatants are making their way into Western Europe and, very likely, to points inside the U.S. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that al Qaeda fighters simply walk into Slovakia, where they can easily make their way further west. Slovakian soldiers simply can't stop all the fighters still fleeing Afghanistan. "They're Afghans, Iraqis and Chechens, mostly, and almost every night we catch a few," Tibor Csomor, a Slovakian police captain, told the Journal. These are fighters, veterans of many wars, who don't wear uniforms and hold a deep hatred for the United States.
Why cordon off a zone, the United States, where these fighters are safe from the U.S. military?
Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Mondays.
opinionjournal.com |
