I am quite disturbed by the tenor of many diaries floating around on this site in regards to the fear of a national military takeover. Reports over the a ready force of 30,000 soldiers ready to respond to a domestic emergency form the first tip of this spear.
A brief disclaimer--I am a current national guardsmen heavily involved in domestic operations planning. I was at a domestic operations conference this past August when I first heard about the ready force. I thought it was a great idea, even from a national guard standpoint.
You in the DK community need to understand. The National Guard has been tapped again and again to fulfill wartime roles in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our equipment is broken, our personnel rosters are critically undermanned, and the deployment tempo is killing morale retention. The primary mission of the national guard is to provide assistance in domestic situations in every variety of situation. But that is hard to do when we are being greatly overused.
Hurricane Katrina is only the first example, as were the tornadoes in Kansas in 2006. Large swaths of the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard were deployed during the time of the hurricane. As a result, the 82nd Airborne was deployed to provide assistance. You all remember General Honore, the commander of that response task force, providing a sense of some control in what any reasonable observer would term chaos.
And I ask you all, did those active duty soldiers and the national guardsmen cause any problems? Not that I remember. I seem to remember the problems being caused by rogue police officers, Blackwater-style private security forces, and even white vigilantes hunting down black people in the aftermath.
So, as a soldier, the tinfoil hat conspiracies about martial law wound me deeply and greatly color my view of this site. I came to this site looking for people who were worried about the hole the current administration has put us, and to look for a way out.
Now, I feel vilified by people who are constantly scared of martial law. The DK community needs to recognize one key aspect about both the active duty and reserve military forces in this country: THEY ARE AMERICANS JUST LIKE YOU!!! Military members are not going to go bat-shit and start arresting everyone and living in your homes.
These are brave Americans who have continued to serve their country in a time of war, even though both of those wars have been horribly mismanaged and most of America could care less that we are over there, thanking us for our service, but not doing a damned thing other than a thank you at the airport. We have seen friends and family buried again and again.
And then we come to places like this on the internet, and we are vilified as nothing more than Stormtroopers, willing to step on the necks of anyone who questions our authority. The military is not some monolith, and despite the efforts of some people on this site and in the blogosphere to de-humanize us as faceless automatons who would willingly crush the democracy out of the country, the democracy many of us would gladly sacrifice our lives for, is disgusting to me. The media has already forgotten about us, starting to pull their full time coverage out of Iraq. Most of America is clueless to what is actually going on over in Iraq or Afghanistan, and diaries pop up all the time about how the military is going to come to your town and sweep you all up and send you to those empty prisons in the Arizona desert. It seems that despite all your respect for the military that pervades this country, there is no respect for the people who serve in it.
These diaries and conspiracy theories denigrate those who serve. We have served when called upon in foreign battlefields from Korea to Iraq to the Philippines to Afghanistan. We have provided assistance in numerous domestic disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, 9-11, the Kansas tornadoes, and the Iowa floods. We will come when we are called to bring food, water, and anything else you may need.
WE WILL NOT COME TO BREAK DOWN YOUR DOORS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT TO CARRY YOU OFF TO SOME PRISON CAMP! That is not the American way, and that is not the way of the American military.
So please, I ask for everyone on this site to take a deep breath. American soldiers are not going to go around like the new Gestapo. Scare tactics used by members of this community are dispiriting and offensive to the spirit and code under which the military serves. Every member of the military comes from somewhere in this country and serves the spirit of democracy. We will sacrifice it all for our flag, so don't turn us into boogie man who will steal you and your children in the middle of the night.