I, and others, have some issues with some of the Professional Military Education institutions and processes (
GEN Scales,
LTC Dempsey), but the system is necessary, and often produces some really interesting, thought-provoking articles. This is such a case.
A retired US Army Colonel and a Civil War Scholar wrote an
article for the
Small Wars Journal (a non-profit, non-military-affiliated scholarly organization) about the considerations and issues that the US military would face if the President invoked the Insurrection Act to eliminate the forcible takeover of a town in the United States by an armed militia. It's a good piece, and relatively short - feel free to go read it now.
Right Here
The article brings up several interesting conflicts created by the restrictions placed on military intelligence operations against US persons (citizens and resident aliens, organizations/corporations made up primarily of citizens and resident aliens). Several executive orders and legislation restrict the ability of the US intelligence community to collect and maintain intelligence within the boundaries of the US, and against US persons - even when working with civilian law enforcement agencies. Were the US Army called upon to plan military operations on US soil against US citizens, military intelligence personnel would be severely limited in the use of all intelligence disciplines (including overhead imagery platforms - the article points out that they would likely be forced to use commercial, unclassified mediums for mapping), and would have to liaise significantly with local, state and federal law enforcement personnel. The article does not question the necessity of all of these restrictions - instead it discusses the ways in which US Army personnel would have to work within their guidelines.
They also bring up the issues of maintaining operational security (OPSEC) while conducting operations in the United States - soldiers who know people in the area, an unrestrained free press, and a 24-hour news cycle constantly second guessing the operations. The amount of coordination needed between the military and federal civilian leadership (in this case, the Attorney General overseeing all military operations) would pose issues, not so much in conflict between military and civilian leadership, but simply coordination. Rules of engagement would be eschewed in favor of standing rules for the the use of force (a different set of standards that would have to be taught to troops). Finally, coordination between the Army, who would conduct limited military operations, and state and federal law enforcement organizations who would arrest criminals involved in the insurrection, and enforce laws in the stead of recently removed militias/cooperating local law enforcement. The article poses several interesting complications to the traditional military planning systems, and makes some limited recommendations for staffing changes at higher echelon elements.
All well and good until an editorialist from the Examiner (a conservative-leaning series of locally tailored newspapers that bought the San Francisco Examiner name a masthead a few years back) read it. The editorial writer, Anthony Martin, (who links to his ministry site from the editorial) uses any number of tropes and logical fallacies (including one of my favorites, the "some say") to conflate this article with US Army policy. Misinterpreting the nature of hypothetical exercises and wargaming, Mr. Martin says that the Small Wars article shows that the "future warfare will be conducted on our own soil. The military will use its full force against our own citizens. The enemy will be average citizens whose values resonate with those articulated by the tea party." Essentially, Martin fails to differentiate between "could" and "will" and the difference between "average citizens whose values resonate with those articulated by the tea party" and hypothetical violent insurrectionists who use the name Tea Party. The scenario is titled "The Scenario (2016)," but Mr. Martin would have you think it was titled "The Plan (2016)."
The editorial piece concludes:
And with the publication of the Benson and Weber article, it is now clear that the U.S. Army considers it a valid proposition to assume that a future civil war will be sparked not by extremist Islamists with dirty bombs or left wing insurrectionists inspired by Alinsky or Ayers but by the tea party and the conservatives who participate in it.
Before I get to the larger anti-intellectual nature of the article, I am going to wreck his conclusion with logic, clause by clause.
"And with the publication of the Benson and Weber article, it is now clear that the U.S. Army considers it a valid proposition..." No. COL (R) Benson is retired and teaches a seminar at Fort Leavenworth - he does not set policy.
"...to assume that a future civil war will be sparked not by extremist Islamists with dirty bombs..." Yes, that is a valid assumption for any person to make. Foreign terrorism does not set off a civil war. Look at the US following 9/11 - we came together as a society.
"...or left wing insurrectionists inspired by Alinsky or Ayers..." No. This assumption is never stated, implicitly or explictly, in the Small Wars Journal article. And if it had, it would not be an unreasonable thing to say - there are significanly more right-wing insurrectionist organizations in the US than left-wing ones (and they tend to be better armed). There are plenty of liberal terrorist organizations, but they rarely hold ground.
"by the tea party and the conservatives who participate in it." No. Again, Martin fails to differentiate between "conservatives who participate in [the tea party]" and hypothetical violent insurrectionists who use the name Tea Party.
Finally, and perhaps most frighteningly, the editorial is implicitly anti-intellectual. The fact that the author doesn't understand (or pretends not to understand for the sake of hyperbole) the difference between policy and hypotheticals written for academic purpose is concerning. The Small Wars piece is an academic exercise, a war game, designed to find faults and strengths in our current system should federal forces be called upon to put down an insurrection on US soil. The nature of the insurrection is irrelevant to the article. Had this article been written in 1996, the organization responsible would have been a militia or a cultist religious organization. The Tea Party (and in this case, the violent extremists who have attached themselves to the outskirts of the Tea Party) name was used because it's topical.
Essentially, the editorial assumes any number of facts not in evidence, conflates an independant article with US Army policy and strays into paranoid fantasy - all to accuse of the Pentagon of liberal conspiracy.
