I want to save it here and, since I don't trust that the link will remain trustworthy, I'm cut-and-pasting the whole thing:
By ADAM FISHER
Tuesday, February
18, 2014
(Published in print: Wednesday, February 19, 2014)
(Published in print: Wednesday, February 19, 2014)
NORTHAMPTON
— I once read a wonderful latter-day fairy tale in which a man refused to go
outside because he was convinced there was an alligator in the front yard that
would eat him.
His friends did what they could to
convince him otherwise — after all, when they looked out the window, they
didn’t see any alligator. His friends talked and talked and urged and urged.
They were loving and concerned. Finally, the man was convinced.
He went outside ... and the
alligator ate him.
On Jan. 24, the U.S. Army’s
Asymmetric Warfare Group cut the ribbon on a $90.1 million, 300-acre fake city
at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia.
The site is about 60 miles south of Washington.
The city contains a fake bank, soccer stadium, underground subway station with
subway cars, train station with real train cars, an embassy and a mosque,
according to the U.S. Army’s website.
The objective is to address
possible — or, given the financial commitment, perhaps probable — combat in
urban areas.
Some of the onlookers at the
ribbon-cutting noticed that the new fake structures bore no resemblance to Baghdad
or Kabul or anywhere else that the U.S.
has lately been prosecuting its military adventures. Instead, it resembled a
kind of Anywhere, USA,
and it was hard not to speculate that in the future, the military might be
forced to take up arms against its own citizens.
This speculation might be dismissed
like the alligator in the front yard, except for a quietly mounting body of
evidence.
A July 25, 2012, article in “Small Wars Journal” provided
this overview of the problem: “If we face a period of persistent global
conflict as outlined in successive National Security Strategy documents, then
Army officers are professionally obligated to consider the conduct of
operations on U.S.
soil.
Army capstone and operating
concepts must provide guidance concerning how the Army will conduct the range
of operations required to defend the republic at home. In this paper, we posit
a scenario in which a group of political reactionaries take over a
strategically positioned town and have the tacit support of not only local law
enforcement but also state government officials, right up to the governor.”
OK, it’s just speculation. A $90.1
million fake city is chump change in the Pentagon’s budget. Flag, mom, apple
pie and mounting profits suggest the alligator is a figment of an overactive
imagination. Or is it?
The 2012 article, like the fake
city at Fort A.P. Hill, no doubt took a cue from a 2006 Army Military Police
training manual which outlines responses to civil unrest both inside and
outside the continental United States.
The manual states that “during
operations to restore order, military forces may present a show of force,
establish roadblocks, break up crowds, employ crowd control agents, patrol,
serve as security forces or reserves and perform other operations as required.”
The internment and “re-education”
of “dissidents” are addressed, as is the use of deadly force: “No warning shots
will be fired.”
Elsewhere, in a variety of settings, a Navy SEAL warned that
the Obama administration was quietly asking top military brass if they would be
comfortable disarming American citizens; Christians, tea party supporters and
anti-abortion activists have been portrayed as a “radical terrorist threat”;
and the Department of Homeland Security has suggested “liberty lovers” were
domestic extremists.
Let me make it plain: I dislike
paranoid, nut-job conspiracy theorists — the ones who come up with righteous
yowls based on cherry-picked and sloppily applied information. I dislike the tendency in others
and I dislike it in myself. But Fort A.P. Hill is not exactly Area 51 (where
all the aliens are stored, right?). It’s a $90.1 million reality as are the
documents cited above. All the sweet reasoning in the world, all the patriotic
explanations in the world, cannot dissuade the thoughts:
• Americans killing or applying
police-state force to other Americans?
• “Democracy” turned on its head
for “patriotic” reasons?
• $90.1 million in taxpayer money
spent to keep taxpayers in line?
Given the economic disparities of
these times, it’s hard not to ask, “If this is the direction the country is
heading in, who benefits?” The country? Its citizens?
This is not a movie like “V for
Vendetta.” This is not some made-up alligator.
Fort A.P. Hill and the thoughts
that fueled it may be out of sight and out of mind by the time the next news
cycle rolls around, but that doesn’t change the reality of the alligator.
Adam Fisher lives in Northampton.
His column will appear on the third Wednesday of the month.
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