Commit The Posse Home!

The National Guard must come home! Bring them home and keep them home!

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina revealed a terrible gap (an understatement) in our country's ability to defend itself from enemies, foreign, domestic, and natural. The National Guard has been given certain responsibilities and abilities to respond appropriately as first national responders to defend the homeland of the United States of America and protect its citizens.

However, for some reason(s), the National Guard has veered off course, and now we see a large sum of our National Guard on foreign soil. Why? I don't know. Likely, because they are seen as additional forces that are need to fight a war in Iraq and other countries we currently occupy. The National Guard has apparently become the backup when the troop numbers of the four branches of the armed forces becomes too low to support the missions in these foreign countries.

What about protecting the United States here, at home??? Who's here to protect us, then? Well, we have the armed forces that were left here at home and the rest of the National Guard not serving abroad. And, the mess after Katrina. Sigh.

It is a conflict of interest to have both the military and the guard filling roles in each others playing field. How? Well, domestic protection is a whole different ballgame from military action in a foreign land. On the home front, citizens don't appreciate being treated roughly by a military force and it is just not good public relations. Military forces have been trained to disregard the humanity of things for the cause of war. It takes a different breed: skill set and mind set to accomplish military actions abroad in times of conflict. The National Guard should be trained and focused only to protect the humanity of our homeland and defend its citizens from invasion, regardless if it be from enemies or natural forces, and keep our country from turning into chaos. Thus, the missions of these two groups should not be served together at home or abroad. They serve different goals and different missions.

If we want to protect our homeland, then bring back and keep our National Guard at home to serve and protect us from invaders, and help us during times of crisis both natural and manmade. Currently the primary objective of the National Guard seems to be to support the armed forces, not the nation's security. Secondary, as the role we all know, is to support local and state authorities. These roles must be reversed and support of the armed forces should be secondary and as a function of support on the home front only. The National Guard should be a branch in the Department of Homeland Security, as should the Coast Guard as their missions are similar. The National Guard should work in conjunction with FEMA, be fully aware and drilled on plans and preparations for all situations that threatened the homeland security. The National Guard should also be prepared to defend the country against all foreign enemies and guard our country here on our home soil.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/HomelandDefense/EM826.cfm

However, there are several instances recently where the Bush Administration has requested the 127 year old federal law called Posse Comitatus Act be amended or abolished all together.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0919/p01s01-usmi.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/09/21/national/w054427D06.DTL

Posse Comitatus was put in place so that only under extreme circumstances could our country be ruled by martial law, that is the military would be the law enforcement. This applies to the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines along with their reserve forces. This could only be done by an act of congress, and was limited to two years or less.

http://www.dojgov.net/posse_comitatus_act.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Posse_Comitatus_Act
http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/oped/owens/05/katrina.html

The only exception to this law is that the national guard and coast guard can assist local law enforcement without congressional intervention.

http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/articles/Trebilcock.htm

As it states in the above website's article, comitatus posse means "power by the county." Allowing the military to essentially have the authority over laws, is declaring perpetual martial law in the United States.

Why? Why do this when we already have a National Guard that already have the authority to help the local authorities when called? Because our country, instead of having a ready force to protect our country's ground here, we set them to fight in Iraq and serve in foreign installations.

I say, DON'T CHANGE THE POSSE COMITATUS ACT! No, change the role of the National Guard to keep them at home to serve us here! And bring back our National Guard from foreign countries NOW!

Pssst! We have another extremely violent hurricane about to unleash its fury on Texas and other gulf coast states again. If we sent those military troops that are here out to fight on foreign lands, and brought back the rest of our National Guard home, then we would have the man power to enforce and protect our citizens from threats, manmade and natural.