Don’t send in the Marines
Sep 30th 2005MichaelMarine Corps
Ollie North has a great article on Posse Comitatus Act and probable impact of making the DOD a first responder. Ollie points out that all military will have to then train to meet this need and not train on destroying the enemy like we need. Ollie, I believe is correct. the Federal government can not be everyware, all the time.
First, neither this President nor any other needs more legalor legislated authority to send U.S. troops into the teeth of a disaster. Every President’s aides carry PEADs — Presidential Emergency Action Documents — draft Executive Orders giving the Chief Executive broad authorities in the midst of a declared national emergency. In May of 1992, President George H. W. Bush issued such an order at the request of California governor during the Rodney King riotsin Los Angeles. His Executive Order 12804 suspended the proscriptions of Posse Comitatus to allow Army and Marine units to restore law and order.
This gets to the point also of state and federal duties and rights. The state has the responsibility to focus as the first responder to any disaster with the federal government organizing and bringing in support shortly after because we can not station the teams that close to the possible disaster.
These PEAD’s take care of times when a state has to ask for assistance but they also maintain the leadership role. But it is the state that is in the area of concern and the best able to be first responders at least for three days.
1 Comment »
One Response to “Don’t send in the Marines”
Seth on 30 Sep 2005 at Fri 30 September 2005 11:08:30 #
This is typical.
Our govt’s reached a point where rather than deal with events on a case-by-case basis, for purely cover-your-ass political reasons they see some need to derive a precedent from a single and thus far rare incident.
The armed forces are the armed forces and their job is to defend the country and project force to other parts of the world where needed to enforce U.S. policy. Their equipment and other logistics elements are theirs for that purpose as well. If you take the bandaids out of a first aid kit because you’re out of scotch tape, you won’t have any to use when someone is bleeding.
I completely approve of calling in a military force to help or even take over operations if the severity of a disaster warrants it, but I’m firmly against adding same as a set-in-stone, permanent, shared primary responsibility.
I think this obvious political damage control ploy is out of bounds, and that Bush and other Republican politicians should stop trying to appease the left at every turn. That’s not what we reelected him/them for. In this as in other issues, they are squandering the power of the majority we now have in the houses of govt instead of using this power to keep the country moving in the right direction{pun intended}.