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FirmhandKY -> RE: Report: Bush Mulled Sending Troops Into Buffalo (7/29/2009 11:05:54 AM)
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ORIGINAL: rulemylife
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ORIGINAL: Irishknight
You completely miss the point once again. I'm not saying we need forget or forgive what Bush and Co. did. But to obsess over something they thought about doing shows an irrational desire to stay in the past.
To obsess so badly on Bush is to ignore what is going on in present day. Remember the past but don't live in it. Bush was not the first president to mull over the idea of troops being used inside the US for law enforcement ideas. The key to this story is that he didn't do it. He actually made one correct choice and still people want to crucify him for it.
I don't know that is true because we have no other evidence of any administration mulling that over.
You can make an argument that Kennedy used troops as law enforcement to maintain order and carry out a federal directive, but that is far different from using troops to directly make arrests of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.
And I will say this one more time, government officials are charged with upholding the law.
For them to be discussing ways of circumventing the law is, in my opinion, a measure of where we are at as a society.
The ends justifying the means has become our dominant philosophy.
He didn't say anything about Kennedy. That was me.
I think you lack much dept of understanding on the issue, I'm afraid, if you think Kennedy was the only one. I'm not an expert, but I'm certainly aware of other times, throughout US history, not including during and immediately after the Civil War which gave impetus to the Posse Comitatus act.
Google is your friend. One example of what is available with a little research:
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Throughout his study, Glasser quotes extensively from primary source documents. The chronological files organize some of these original documents by year, from 1917 to 1932, for a basic timeline overview, but the files relating to specific domestic disturbances form the heart of the collection. They are arranged in alphabetical order by the state or city involved; the material covers nearly thirty different states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Prominent correspondents in these sections include Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, General Tasker Bliss, Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge, Felix Frankfurter, Arizona Governor George W. P. Hunt, U.S. Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, President Woodrow Wilson, and General Leonard Wood.
The importance of copper to the wartime effort heightened the federal government’s concerns over the potential involvement of enemy aliens and other subversives in the 1917 Arizona copper mine strikes. The presence of Mexican and Austrian immigrants among the striking workers drew careful attention, as did the Arizona governor’s possible ties to members of the radical labor organization Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
Government communications relating to the Butte, Montana, copper strikes (1917–1920) reflect similar concerns. The telegrams and letters collected here document the decisions to use federal troops in both instances. In addition, there are documents on the infamous “Bisbee deportation” of 1917, in which armed vigilantes rounded up over one thousand striking miners in Bisbee, Arizona, and abandoned them across the border in New Mexico. There are also reports on federal investigations into the activities of known and suspected IWW members in Arizona and Montana.
Investigations of IWW members and other radicals form a large portion of the files on the steel strikes in Gary, Indiana (1919–1921) and the shipyard strikes in Seattle, Washington (1918–1920). In October 1919, General Leonard Wood considered the risk of violence in Gary so high that he placed the city under qualified martial law. As in the case of copper, lumber was of key importance in the U.S. war effort, particularly in the manufacture of aircraft. As the documents show, workers employed in the Pacific Northwest lumber industry labored in isolated, “unsocial” conditions and had unique concerns.
Threats of violence and IWW activism among the lumbermen in Washington State led to federal involvement in the situation and even a proposal to form “lumber jack regiments” of military volunteers to procure the needed lumber.
Military intervention was also a factor in the 1919 Boston, Massachusetts, police strike and in strikes of streetcar workers in Chattanooga and Knoxville, Tennessee (1917, 1919); Columbus and Savannah, Georgia (1918–1919); New Orleans, Louisiana (1920); and Denver, Colorado (1920). Other incidents covered in these files include strikes of dock workers (New Orleans, 1919; New York, 1919) and garment workers (New York, 1917). Federal troops proved useful in quelling racial violence as well as labor unrest. There is material here on riots in Arkansas (1919–1920); North Carolina (1918, 1920); Virginia (1918); Chicago, Illinois (1919); Lexington, Kentucky (1920); Omaha, Nebraska (1919); Charleston, South Carolina (1919); and Washington, D.C. (1917, 1919). On a few occasions, the federal government supplied troops for smaller scale law and order duties, as in the case of the November 1917 Ivie Mickle murder trial in Texas. During Prohibition, states such as Florida and New Jersey also requested federal assistance in blocking the illegal importation and trafficking of alcohol.
But, perhaps more interesting is something that recently happened on Obama's watch:
Army probes domestic use of troops in Alabama
Rachel Oswald
Published: Wednesday March 18, 2009
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Though the strained Samson Police Department was no doubt glad to have U.S. Army military police on hand to direct traffic during last week's tragic shooting spree, it appears that the troops were deployed without the proper authorization and in possible violation of federal law.
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The White House press office has not yet responded to media requests for comment on the Army inquiry.
Firm
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