Dangerous Instruments and the Gages of History

"There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation and which place them so totally at the mercy of their governors that those governors, whether legislative or executive, should be restrained from keeping such instruments on foot but in well-defined cases. Such an instrument is a standing army."

--Thomas Jefferson to David Humphreys, 1789.

We first talked about the decision to stray from hundreds of years of prudence and tradition, namely the stationing of active combat troops in the United States, back in September, before the battle-tested 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, (formerly in charge of running the Iraqi province of Faluja) was transfered to the command of NORCOM, The North American Unified Command, which itself is a fairly recent creation. Some time has passed now since the death of Posse Comititatus on October 1st, 2008, and the Washington Post has recently offered a hodpodge cut and paste of government press releases it is choosing to pass off as an article on the subject, that may illuminate what other steps lay in the future of a further militarized america.

You can read the whole article here, and id recomend it, but what really stuck me, and I mean struck me, laugh out loud hit me between the eyes, was right in the first lines.

The U.S. Military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United
States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a
nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to
Pentagon officials.

If you dont really understand what I found amusing about that, in a very sad, but unstiflable laughter, maybe i should explain myself as i know not everyone enjoys history as much as myself.

Consider the following:

In November of 1774, General Gage, the acting military governor of boston since his disbanding and outlawing of the provincial democratic government of that city, wrote a letter to the British Ministry stating that if he were to be able to subdue the rebellion and retain control of the colony, he would require, at the least, 20,000 troops.

Are you still with me? Hah. History does have a tendency to repeat itself, doesnt it... General Gage did not receive his 20,000 troops, and infact, nearly the same number of colonial militiamen, farmers and other free citizens, took the city of Boston, restoring its provincial government, after laying seige to it. We can only hope those who wish to "retain control" today will find themselves with like luck.

Of course, the numbers of free militiamen who might respond to a call such as that one that went out after april, 19th, 1775, if it went out today, is not known to me. i can only hope, that if any of them are reading this article, they might take a page out of the pentagon's playbook, and look to over trippling their numbers in the next 3 years.

As Jefferson also said: "Our duty is to act upon things as they are and to make a reasonable provision for whatever they may be."

III

Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges