John Whitehead's Commentary
The Coming Military Takeover of America
Americans became exasperated with democracy. We were disillusioned with the apparent inability of elected government to solve the nation's perplexing dilemmas. We were looking for someone or something that could produce workable answers. The one institution of government in which people retained faith was the military.The year is 2012, and the president has just died. General E. Thomas U. Brutus has somehow "persuaded" the vice president not to take the oath of office and proceeds to declare himself commander-in-chief. Without a moment's delay, the American government is placed under martial law and, thus, under military control.
--Brigadier General Charles Dunlap.
Sounds far-fetched? Not according to Air Force Brigadier General Charles Dunlap, whose 1992 article, "The Origins of the Military Coup of 2012," provides a convincing scenario for a possible military takeover in the near future. The article, written by then-Lt. Col. Dunlap as part of his studies at the National War College in Washington, DC, paints a chilling picture of our nation being slowly overtaken by military rule. Dunlap warns:
People need to understand that the armed forces exist to support and defend government, not to be the government. Faced with intractable national problems on one hand, and an energetic and capable military on the other, it can be all too seductive to start viewing the military as a cost-effective solution. We made a terrible mistake when we allowed the armed forces to be diverted from its original purpose.Such a "mistake" is more likely to happen in the midst of societal malaise, a state of affairs reflected in the lack of political participation by the citizenry. Voter apathy is such now that barely over 50 percent of eligible voters even cast a ballot for presidential candidates. And with the immense distractions of entertainment and media, it is doubtful that the average citizen really has a clue about what goes on in the hallowed halls of Washington, DC.
Considering our responses to the fear and trepidation gripping American culture and an economy so unreliable that the stock market dips and swings like an erratic pendulum, I fear that we may already have traveled too far down the road Dunlap has warned against. One thing is certain: the populace's clamor for security, which, of course, the military now provides, is at an all-time high.
Unlike the rest of government, the military has enjoyed a remarkably steady climb in popularity since the 1980s. Moreover, the armed forces, through their academies, are turning out some of the brightest, best educated and best disciplined Americans in history. While polls consistently show that the public invariably gives Congress low marks, confidence in the military is surpassing every other institution in American society. As one commentator has written, "I'm beginning to think that the only way the national government can do anything worthwhile is to invent a security threat and turn the job over to the military."
Much of Dunlap's concerns about the military being used to "fix" civil problems are now being realized. For instance, the increasing use of the military to patrol our borders in the fight against drugs has resulted in the military's assumption of certain police functions. This historic change of policy was endorsed by Congress in 1981 with the enactment of the Military Cooperation with Civilian Law Enforcement Act. As a result, the Department of Defense spends billions of dollars on counter-narcotic crusades, and American troops have become an adjunct to many police forces in the country. Whereas military uniforms on our streets, buildings and airports once drew stares, they no longer even raise concern.
Moreover, the military is being called upon to deal with environmental problems and catastrophes. And as more commercial airlines declare bankruptcy and discontinue unprofitable air routes, the military may very well be called upon to provide essential air support to various regions of the country.
Overseas, humanitarian and nation-building assignments have proliferated. This was clearly demonstrated in Operation Iraqi Freedom, as newscasts showed American troops distributing aid packages to haggard civilians in Iraq. This practice has been duplicated worldwide.
These new military programs--and the growing dependence on them--have forced a consolidation of power in the military. In fact, the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 greatly strengthened the office of the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff. This legislation reversed 200 years of American history by establishing a single uniformed officer as the "Principal Military Advisor" to the President. The Chairman is also responsible for furnishing the strategic direction of the armed forces and developing joint doctrine for all four services. Unlike its role in the past, the military is now involved in policymaking--a state of affairs that inevitably raises the specter of a figure-head president manipulated by the military elite. This concentration of power in one military office was specifically and overwhelmingly rejected by Congress in the past--in 1947, 1949 and 1958--on the grounds that in a democracy, no single military officer, no matter what his personal qualifications, should have such power. And with the continuing unification of the four branches of the armed forces, the power of the Chairman is staggering.
The American military's increasing isolation from mainstream America is also a point of contention for Gen. Dunlap. The nation's two million active duty soldiers have, over time, become a self-contained society--one with its own solemn rituals, language and system of justice. As one reporter notes, "Increasingly isolated from mainstream America, today's troops tend to view the civilian world with suspicion and sometimes hostility."
Dunlap argues that the preoccupation with humanitarian missions, narcotics interdiction and all the rest of the ancillary and nontraditional missions will eventually leave "the military unfit to engage an authentic military opponent." Rather than bearing in mind that the focus of the military is on war-fighting, the military has increasingly altered its purpose. This, according to Dunlap, will weaken the military's martial spirit and, thus, its effectiveness as a fighting force.
As the following 1990 incident reported by Newsweek shows, this has caused real concern among some military officers: "When a Marine reconnaissance patrol skirmished with smugglers near the Arizona-Mexico border last December--firing over their heads to disperse them--one colonel near retirement age shook his head. He argued that combat-trained Marines shouldn't be diminishing hard-learned skills by squeezing off warning shots. 'That teaches some very bad habits,' he said."
Gen. Dunlap leaves us with some sobering advice. First, the armed forces must exclusively focus on military duties. Second, the defense budget (which for 2004 is projected at $208 billion) must be divested of what he calls perception-skewing expenses (such as narcotics patrolling, environmental cleanup and police work). Third, the unification of the services must be resisted and the four separate branches kept intact, which disperses power. Fourth, we must ensure that the military is staffed at both the officer and enlisted levels with diverse elements of all races and classes. Fifth, where possible, military families should live in civilian communities and help foster the "citizen soldier attitude" among the full-time professional soldiers.
Finally, we can find no better model for dealing with the military than our own history. Colonial Americans, for example, had a deep distrust of professional militaries. They knew from experience that standing armies could be tools of a tyrannical monarch or a rogue military commander. And the framers of our founding documents knew that exercising the right to alter or abolish an oppressive government--a central tenet of the Declaration of Independence--is no easy task when government authorities can call upon a full-time standing army for protection.
This basic distrust of the military is why the Second and Third Amendments of the Bill of Rights advocate arms for citizens and civilian control of the military. George Washington also warned of the dangers of overgrown military establishment in his farewell address. And in his renowned treatises Democracy in America (1835-40), Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that a military establishment that was more powerful than a reasonably predictable threat "could become a kind of republic within itself."
All Americans, civilian and military alike, must be mindful that democracy is a fragile institution. It must be continuously nurtured and scrupulously protected. This means, as Gen. Dunlap notes, that when our civilian or military leaders execute policies that are wrong, we must speak out. If so, then hopefully Dunlap's work of fiction will, in his words, "remain one."
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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