Creeping toward the total police state

By Libby Spencer

I know that the Bush administration is almost over and I'd like to think that an Obama administration won't be embracing these policies, but it still concerns me that they feel like making them on their way out the door. Granted the level of drug cartel related violence in Mexico has reached alarming levels, but it rarely spills across the border and even when it does, it's more in the nature of terrorist attack style warfare so this DHS contingency plan sounds about as sensible as the strategy in Iraq. Meaning not sensible at all.

Officials of the Homeland Security Department said the plan called for aircraft, armored vehicles and special teams to converge on border trouble spots, with the size of the force depending on the scale of the problem. Military forces would be called upon if civilian agencies like the Border Patrol and local law enforcement were overwhelmed, but the officials said military involvement was considered unlikely.

Sure, they said they were unlikely to really attack Iraq unless absolutely necessary at the time the AUMF was enacted too. And then there's this little item from a couple of weeks ago.

Deepening economic strife in the US could lead to civil unrest and violence that would require military intervention, warns a new report from the US Army War College.

The author warns potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, "unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters." The situation could deteriorate to the point where military intervention was required, he argues.

"Under these conditions and at their most violent extreme," he concludes, "civilian authorities, on advice of the defense establishment, would need to rapidly determine the parameters defining the legitimate use of military force inside the United States."

The author is quick to point out that this is his own opinion and not a US policy -- yet -- but seeing a pattern here? You can download the full report, "Known Unknowns: Unconventional 'Strategic Shocks' in Defense Strategy Development," at the link. I feel certain that some policy maker at the DoD will be reading it. Somehow, that doesn't make me feel safer.

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)