Saviors in Uniform? (Updated, 2/2)

"The Army and the People Are One!" Don't count on it.

"The army is all good men but the police, every policeman is bad," explained Egyptian demonstrator Mustafa Abdel Wahab to Time magazine. Mr. Wahab is as tragically mistaken in the first assessment as he is correct in the second. 

In Egypt -- as is the case nearly everywhere else -- the police and army are what Alexander Hamilton called "correspondent appendages of military establishments." Not every individual soldier or policeman is exceptionally depraved, of course. But the institutional purpose of such establishments is to serve the depraved interests of those who control the State. This is why, as Hamilton pointed out, military bodies (which include police agencies) "have a tendency to destroy ... civil and political rights." Decades of "emergency" rule in Egypt have destroyed whatever trivial substantive differences may once have separated the police from the military. 

In the late summer of 1994 I spent a couple of weeks in Cairo covering a United Nations conference on population control. That event attracted thousands of people -- politicians, delegates, lobbyists, activists, and journalists -- from around the world. In anticipation of media scrutiny the Mubarak regime made a considerable effort to prettify itself. The cosmetic changes included issuing brand new white uniforms to the heavily-armed police officers who were deployed in small groups everywhere in downtown Cairo.

I remained in Cairo for a few days after the conference ended. It was my expectation that the departure of the Important People would bring about a change in the security situation. In a sense, I was correct: The white uniforms were put away, and the heavily-armed police who prowled the streets reverted to their standard military attire. Like other visitors, I had assumed that the high-profile police presence was the exception, rather than the rule. We were wrong.



The ongoing upheaval in Egypt offers a potent illustration of the fact that government police agencies are instruments of plunder, rather than protection -- and that protection of person and property is best handled privately.


When they weren't beating people in the streets or hauling them off to be murdered, plainclothes thugs from Egypt's Central Security Service (or Mukhabarat) brazenly looted private businesses or provided protection to those who did -- deputized criminals referred to by one protester on the scene as "prisoners who have been released by that bastard Mubarak in return for their services to beat up civilians." Egyptians not employed in the coercive sector responded by creating private anti-looting patrols. 

Private defense: Egyptians link arms to protect property.

Public loathing of the government's police force is widespread in Egypt, which is a healthy development in any society. However, as Mr. Wahab's comments illustrate, the growing disrepute of Egypt's police organs organs has actually enhanced the stature of the military.

Writes Steve Coll of The New Yorker: "There have been reports that protesters are relieved to see the Army in the streets; no doubt, as in many other like countries, the Army has more credibility than the corrupt and often torture-prone police." 

For 31 years, Hosni Mubarak has been a CIA sock puppet ruling through decree while maintaining a pretense of "legitimacy." Mubarak avoided naming a successor, most likely because Washington didn't give him permission to do so. In the terminal crisis of his reign, he has tapped Omar Suleiman, the head of the Mukhabarat secret police, to serve as vice president. Since Suleiman has been running Egypt's apparatus of imprisonment, torture, and murder for decades, this appointment wasn't really a promotion. And in his current position Suleiman would be in charge, even if somebody else is cast in the role of figurehead.

Dictator-in-waiting: Suleiman, left, with Israel's PM Netanyahu.

 Ian Black, Middle East editor for the London Guardian, points out that Suleiman "is the keeper of Egypt's and the president's secrets, a behind-the-scenes operator who has been intimately involved in the most sensitive issues of national security and foreign policy for nearly 20 years." 

Not only was he was the dungeon master and chief persecutor of Egypt's political dissidents, but he also coordinated rendition and torture operations with the CIA. He's also been a dutiful asset of the Pentagon, according to WikiLeaks. 

A Foreign Policy profile of Suleiman published two years ago points out that Suleiman was a rent boy for both sides during the Cold War circle-jerk: He attended "the Soviet Union's Frunze Military Academy" while Cairo was a Soviet client, and then "received training at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School and Center" at Ft. Bragg in the 1980s. As head of the Mukhabarat, Suleiman was"one of a rare group of Egyptian officials who hold both a military rank ... and a civilian office...." His most important assignment was to monitor "Egypt's security apparatus for signs of internal coups." 

Unlike those who had previously held his position, Suleiman became a public figure several years ago as Mubarak -- who reportedly suffers from cancer-- became enfeebled. He and his handlers spent several years building internal coalitions and developing diplomatic contacts abroad. As Cairo-based journalist Issandr Amrani points out, "most Suleiman supporters recognize that to gain the presidency he would most likely have to carry out a coup -- perhaps a soft, constitutional one -- but a coup nonetheless."

Thumbs up for tyranny!

Well, how about a "People Power" coup, orchestrated with the help of the kind folks in Washington? That appears to be what we're seeing in Egypt now, and we could conceivably see something similar here in the United States before the decade is over.

The convulsion in Cairo brings to mind Brig. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap's essay "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012," which was published in the Winter 1992—93 issue of the U.S. Army War College journal Parameters -- a subject I have discussed before.

Dunlap used the literary device of a smuggled prison letter composed by "Prisoner 222305759," condemned to death for "treason" by the American military junta of Gen. E.T. Brutus. Following a series of military disasters overseas and domestic crises at home, Brutus staged a coup in the name of protecting "public order" from the corruption of the political class. 

In the decades leading up to the putsch, the "Prisoner" recalled, "The one institution of government in which people retained faith was the military." Even as the public lamented the corruption and profligacy of Big Government, they had nothing but bottomless respect for the Regime's chief instrument of death and property destruction. The military retained its prestige in spite of the fact that its structural defects -- made painfully visible by a long, bloody, and futile war in the Gulf --  left it "unfit to engage an authentic military opponent."

While the military was no longer well-suited to fight and win wars, its subtle integration into every element of domestic life made it perfectly suited to carry out a coup: 

"Eventually, people became acclimated to seeing uniformed military personnel patrolling their neighborhood. Now troops are an adjunct to almost all police forces in the country. In many of the areas where much of our burgeoning population of elderly Americans live — [military dictator] Brutus calls them 'National Security Zones' — the military is often the only law enforcement agency. Consequently, the military was ideally positioned in thousands of communities to support the coup."

During Egypt's long "state of emergency," its army managed to lose two wars abroad, while fine-tuning its skills as an instrument of domestic suppression. Granted, it has announced that it will not fire on Egyptian citizens, which is always a welcome development. But why should the Egyptian Army fire on protesters, given that the citizen uprising is helping to entrench military rule, rather than end it?

With our own economy unraveling and our political class becoming shamelessly predatory and unbearably impudent, it's not difficult to imagine a similar scenario playing out in America, with Tea Party Republicans -- for whom the military (which in our system includes our own "torture-prone" police) is sacrosanct --  eagerly welcoming a military coup as "liberation" from Big Government. Perhaps Field Marshal Stanley McChrystal -- formerly military proconsul in Afghanistan, most recently seen flogging Soviet-style "national service" in the pages of Newsweek -- could be tapped to play the role of America's Omar Suleiman. 

UPDATE 

"`Why don't you protect us?' some protesters shouted at the soldiers, who replied they did not have orders to do so and told people to go home." 

This on-scene account from Tahrir Square described a coordinated attack by a mob of "pro-government protesters," some of whom were mounted on horses or camels. The assailants -- criminal subcontractors in the employ of the regime -- used clubs, whips, straight razors, and machetes. They acted with complete impunity, beating and killing at whim. Among their targets were journalists attempting to document the pogrom: Anderson Cooper discovered that international celebrity conferred no protection.

Among those chronicling the scene are Graeme Wood of The Atlantic, who was present in Tahrir Square during the last mass protest -- the 2003 demonstrations against Washington's assault on Iraq. 

"During those protests, the police encircled the protesters and let them scream for a couple days, Wood recalls. "Late at night, I stood among the police, asking them about their hometowns in Upper Egypt. Then, around midnight, they were called to attention, told to harden their lines, and finally to march toward the remaining protesters, letting none escape. Truncheons came down, and within a few minutes they had rounded everyone up into paddy wagons, and the square resumed its light evening traffic."

While blood is being shed in Tahrir Square, government-organized bands of criminals are looting everything in sight. The police are actively protecting the thugs and looters. Meanwhile, the "good men" in the Army do nothing to protect those who had trusted them.

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Dum spiro, pugno!

"Question 46," Revisited

Policing the world, from the outside in: A US soldier deployed under UN command in Bosnia frisks a civilian at a weapons confiscation checkpoint. Military personnel are now taking part as "observers" at sobriety/driver's license checkpoints here in the US; could firearms checkpoints be in our future as well?
(Photo courtesy of Comeandtakeit.com.)

“Hey, Will – we just got a letter from a Marine saying that he was part of a project dealing with civilian arms confiscation by the military. Are you interested?”

It had been a fairly slow morning up until the point Dave Bohon, at the time the managing editor at The New American, came down to the research department with the aforementioned letter clutched in his hands and a puzzled expression inscribed in his aquiline features.

Practically leaping out of my chair, I grabbed the proffered letter, a handwritten missive attached to a multi-page document called a "Combat Arms Survey" (scroll down). I read both the letter and the questionnaire with a sense of mingled dread and excitement.

As students of the federalization and militarization of law enforcement, my associates and I knew things of this sort had to be happening, but proving it was somewhat difficult. Here was a letter that seemed to provide the dreadful confirmation. While it would be useful to see our suspicions confirmed, we couldn't exactly take pleasure in the knowledge that one of our worst fears appeared to be taking tangible form.

The letter's return address was Twentynine Palms Marine Base in California, and the author – a Marine Lance Corporal – had provided contact information. After reading the letter three or four times, I called the phone number and contacted the Marine. We spoke for about a half hour, during which time he described the incident in greater detail. Of particular interest was the final question in the survey, which -- as we will see anon -- did indeed ask about the willingness of Marines to seize firearms from Americans, using lethal force to do so if necessary.

In that pre-Blogosphere era, we had to wait several weeks for the story to see print, but within hours of the first copies of the July 11 issue reaching subscribers our research department was dispatching fax copies of the letter and the survey - of which we had the sole original copies -- to curious and outraged people across the nation. Many of them had exactly the same reaction we did: A joyless sense of dreadful, unwelcome vindication.

The Marine was one of several hundred who had combat experience in recent deployments abroad. The conversation took place in late May 1994; accordingly, the pool of combat veterans included those who had served in Panama, the first Gulf War, and Somalia. They were assembled in a mess hall and given a 46-question survey composed by Navy Lt. Commander Ernest “Guy” Cunningham, who was working on a Master's Thesis dealing with the deployment of US military units under foreign command as part of UN-supervised missions abroad.

While there was much in the survey that a Constitutionalist would find objectionable – for instance, Marines were asked about their willingness to swear an oath of allegiance to the United Nations – the final question was positively thermonuclear:

“The US government declares a ban on the possession, sale, transportation, and transfer of all non-sporting firearms. A thirty (30) day amnesty period is permitted for these firearms to be turned over to the local authorities. At the end of this period, a number of citizen groups refuse to turn over their firearms. Consider the following statement: I would fire upon US citizens who refuse or resist confiscation of firearms banned by the US government.”

As it happens, Lt. Cmndr. Cunningham was not promoting civilian disarmament, or the cession of the US military to UN control. He was using his survey to determine the extent to which such policy choices would have the support of military personnel who had served in combat abroad.

When Cunningham released his findings it was revealed that more than 61 percent of the Marines who took the survey responded that they wouldn't carry out such an order under any circumstances. Many of them took the time to expand upon their answers through comments in the margin of the survey, often written in language that would bring a maidenly blush to the gnarled cheeks of Deadwood's Al Swearengen.

Paving the road to serfdom with the remains of destroyed civilian firearms: A US soldier presides over the destruction of confiscated guns in Bosnia. (Comeandtakeit.com.)

Of course, it was gratifying as it is to know that most of the combat veterans surveyed by Cunningham emphatically rejected the concept of domestic civilian disarmament by the military. However, the study did suggest the existence of a sizable pool of military personnel willing to carry out that mission.

In that particular group, 79 Marines – a little more than a quarter of those surveyed -- replied to Question 46 in the affirmative, a response Cunningham said “showed an alarming ignorance of the Posse Comitatus Act ... and of how to treat an unlawful order.”

Now, roughly fifteen years later, it's hardly clear that the order to gun down American civilians defending their innate right to armed self-defense would be considered unlawful, at least in a positivist sense, by a majority of service personnel.

In September 2006, on the same day the Bush Regime effectively dismantled the habeas corpus guarantee it inflicted what may be lethal injury to the Posse Comitatus Act as well by providing the president with the means to make the National Guard units of all 50 states into his personal army, to be deployed domestically in any way he sees fit. At least three combat brigades are now assigned to domestic duty as a homeland security force under Northern Command.

Those troops would supposedly be used for the sole purpose of dealing with catastrophic events, such as terrorism involving the use of non-conventional weapons; however, the initial report indicated that these combat veterans, during their domestic deployment, would be equipped and train to deal with crowd control and other population management tasks. This is why the unit would be outfitted with “non-lethal” weaponry, in addition to the conventional variety.

As I've noted in previous reports, active-duty military personnel were deeply involved in hands-on law enforcement (including the use of satellite and other surveillance technology) during the 2008 political conventions in Denver and St. Paul. Last Friday (December 12) brought another ominous expansion of the role of active-duty military personnel in routine law enforcement when elements of the California Highway Patrol conducted a joint “sobriety/driver's license checkpoint” alongside the San Bernadino County Sheriff's Office and a contingent of Military Police from the US Marine Corps.


Of particular interest to me is the fact that this troubling venture involves the Twentynine Palms Air Ground Combat Center. This may be completely insignificant. But it is an odd and unsettling coincidence, at the very least.

"We Are the World": John Richter, center right, is a participant in the UN's International Police Task Force in Bosnia. Originally from Illinois, he is seen here taking part in a multinational mission with several British officers and a Nepalese soldier. (Comeandtakeit.com.)



Sobriety checkpoints are a perfectly mundane (but by no means harmless) law enforcement function; they don't involve catastrophic circumstances, either natural or man-made.


Most importantly, highway checkpoints are a martial law exercise, since they involve temporary detention and scrutiny of an entire population by armed enforcement personnel. Last Summer, police in Washington, D.C. used checkpoints to restrict movement into and out of entire city blocks; this initiative was modeled on security practices used by occupation forces in Iraq. Integrating military personnel into a sobriety checkpoint is a different but even more troubling refinement of this martial law tactic.

Attorney Lawrence Taylor, whose specialized practice deals entirely with those caught in the Constitution-free zone of DUI enforcement (a form of plunder disguised as a public safety exercise that is itself sufficiently outrageous to justify widescale insurrection) reports that his inquiries with a local USMC public affairs sergeant “resulted in assurances that the Marines would be there `as observers.'”

“Hmmmm.... military observers,” mused Taylor. “Isn't that how it all starts?”

Indeed it is, and if the Regime ruling us wants to get serious about civilian disarmament, the process will at some point involve the deployment of military personnel at checkpoints and roadblocks.

Furthermore, as anybody who recently has endured the indignity of a traffic stop can attest, police in most jurisdictions routinely inquire as to whether there are weapons in the car. (In my most recent traffic stop, the officer asked, “Are there any weapons in your car I need to know about?” “No, none that you need to know about,” was my immediate response.)

With the police increasingly taking on the aspect of a fully-realized military occupation force, it may seem redundant for the regular military to assume a more active role in “homeland security.” The fact that such efforts are not only underway, but accelerating, is highly suggestive of very bad intentions on the part of those who presume to rule us.

As the depression deepens into the economic equivalent of a quantum singularity, and fear is finally transmuted into public outrage over the redistribution of wealth to protect the Swindler Class, a spark will be struck somewhere, and a population center of some size is going to go up in flames. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if the Regime's huge population of informants and provocateurs include people eagerly spraying accelerant of some kind wherever promising examples of social friction can be found.

When the fire erupts – whether through spontaneous combustion or through the ministrations of the Regime's paid incendiaries – the script will call for the government to deploy occupation troops, on the assumption that the best way to battle a social conflagration would be to suffocate liberty, rather than extinguishing the source of the fire.

The possibility of full-scale domestic military mobilization to suppress insurrection is one of several scenarios limned in the recent, widely publicized US Army War College paper “Known Unknowns: Unconventional `Strategic Shocks' in Defense Strategy Development.”

The report examines several ongoing and potential sources of “strategic dislocation” for the empire (an entirely appropriate term not used in the report, even though it should have been) both abroad and at home. The Iraqi insurgency was cited as a key example of an unforeseen “shock” that set back the course of the empire; this despite the fact that any reasonably intelligent person with a particle of human understanding could have predicted that Iraqis would organize to resist foreign occupation.

There are at least two kinds of “strategic shocks” described in the report. One is the “Natural Endpoint” of a given trend-line; another is referred to as a “Dangerous Waypoint” or a “Discontinuous Break” that interrupts an otherwise positive trend-line.

Curiously – or perhaps not, given that this was a paper produced by an arm of the Regime – no thought is given to the possibility that ongoing difficulties both at home and abroad are auguries of the “Natural Endpoint” of the imperial trend-line that began – well, let's say with the closing of the Western Frontier (and the related massacre of Lakota at Wounded Knee) in 1890.

Acknowledging and welcoming the end of the American Empire would be a singularly healthy development; it would bring about a legitimate revolution in military affairs, and could foreclose the possibility of martial law in the immediate future. But once again, such possibilities simply don't exist, as far as the author of this War College study is concerned.

Accordingly, beginning on page 31 of that document we find a brief and remarkably candid (and, curiously, completely un-sourced) discussion of possible “Violent, Strategic Dislocation Inside the United States.”

In the event that “organized violence against local, state and national authorities” were to materialize – that is, if the long-suffering productive people finally have a surfeit of armed parasites and start fighting back – it might “exceed the capacity of the former two [that is, local and state governments] to restore public order and protect vulnerable populations.” (The “vulnerable” in this case being the soft-handed tax feeders who cower behind the armed people wearing State-issued costumes.)

In such circumstances, the military “might be forced ... to put its broad resources at the disposal of civil authorities to contain and reverse violent threats to domestic tranquility,” the report continues. “Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” (Emphasis added.)

Now, I have no way of knowing if the author of this report is aware of the fact that the phrase “human security,” as used by the exalted beings employed by the United Nations, refers to a condition in which disarmed populations depend entirely on government for their protection.

It was the objective of “human security” that was being pursued in Rwanda in 1993 through a peace treaty that required the disarmament of everybody but the government's armed enforcement personnel. This made it quite simple for the Rwandan “Hutu Power” Junta to slaughter roughly 1.1 million Tutsis (and moderate Hutus) during the 103-day orgy of genocide that began in April 1994.*

Civilian disarmament is integral to any military occupation, whether it's carried out in the service of “peacekeeping,” colonialism, or genocide (and those categories do tend to blend at the margins). Since 1994, the US military has been involved in a series of occupation missions – in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere. Nearly all of them involve some large-scale disarmament initiative. Recently in Iraq, US military personnel have been confiscating toy guns from Iraqi children.

Many of those military personnel are Guardsmen and Reservists who will return to jobs in “civilian” law enforcement well-versed in the logic of civilian disarmament as a necessity for “force protection.” Others are military personnel who will be fast-tracked into law enforcement careers once they come home and look for work in an exceptionally bad labor market. Still others will serve “dwell-time” missions stateside as part of Northern Command's homeland security force.

It would be immensely useful – and probably quite horrifying – to have those personnel take Guy Cunningham's “Combat Arms Survey,” and examine their responses to the notorious Question 46. How many of them would be willing to shoot Americans in order to confiscate their guns if ordered to do so?

Obviously, I can't provide an answer to that question that is anything other than speculation. I do recall an incident in late 2001, during a speaking tour in support of a book dealing with the subject of civilian disarmament.

The tour took me to Memphis, Tennessee, where I addressed a large audience who had gathered in a very well-appointed hotel. Just down the hall from our meeting, a ballroom had been rented for a formal event involving recruiters for the various branches of the military.

The hallways were full of young officers and non-coms in formal military attire. At one point I spied two of them – one of them a Marine – examining a poster advertising the subject of my speech, “Civilian Disarmament.” The Marine turned to his buddy and, with what appeared to be an approving smirk, commented: “Sounds like a good idea.”

---

*For those interested in a more detailed account of how the UN's lethal doctrine of “human security”played out in the Rwandan Genocide, please see chapter five of my book Global Gun Grab, particularly pages 70-75. Anyone interested in getting a copy directly from me can send $6.00 (which includes postage and handling) to 1318 3^rd Avenue South, Payette, ID 83661.

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Dum spiro, pugno!