POLICE STATE / MILITARY - LOOKING GLASS NEWS | |
Natural Disasters and the Militarization of America |
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by Michel Chossudovsky The Centre for Research on Globalisation Entered into the database on Monday, October 24th, 2005 @ 12:36:08 MST |
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Both the Avian Flu threat, which has taken on a political twist, and the hurricane
disasters are being used by the Bush White House to justify a greater role for
the Military in the country's civilian affairs. Bush hinted, offhandedly, at the height of Hurricane Rita that the Military
should become the "lead agency" in disaster relief: "Is there a natural disaster--of a certain size--that would then enable
the Defense Department to become the lead agency in coordinating and leading
the response effort? That's going to be a very important consideration for
Congress to think about." A few weeks later at a White House Press Conference, President Bush pointed
to a role for the Military in enforcing quarantines in the case of an outbreak
of avian flu: "I have thought through the scenarios of what an avian flu outbreak
could mean. ... If we had an outbreak somewhere in the United States, do we
not then quarantine that part of the country? And how do you, then, enforce
a quarantine? ... And who best to be able to effect a quarantine? One option
is the use of a military that's able to plan and move. So that's why I put
it on the table. I think it's an important debate for Congress to have."
(White House Press conference, October 4, 2005) Meanwhile, a new media consensus is in the making. Highlighted in the tabloids
and on network TV, the threats of natural disasters are now casually lumped
together with those associated with a terror attack on the Homeland. According
to Daniel Henniger writing in the Wall Street Journal: "The question raised by the Katrina fiasco. is whether the threat from
madmen [Osama and Al Zarqawi] and nature is now sufficiently huge in its potential
horror and unacceptable loss that we should modify existing jurisdictional
authority to give the Pentagon functional first-responder status." Fait Accompli What is the dividing line, from the point of view of emergency procedures,
between these two distinct phenomena? Or is there a dividing line between a
humanitarian disaster resulting from a natural cause on the one hand, and a
real or perceived "terror attack on America" on the other? The Department of Homeland Security's National
Response Plan (NRP) (December2004) eliminates the distinction between a
civilian and a national security emergency situation: "This approach is unique and far reaching in that it, for the first
time, eliminates critical seams and ties together a complete spectrum
of incident management activities to include the prevention of, preparedness
for, response to, and recovery from terrorism, major natural disasters, and
other major emergencies. The end result is vastly improved coordination
among Federal, State, local, and tribal organizations to help save lives and
protect America's communities by increasing the speed, effectiveness, and
efficiency of incident management." http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/NRPbaseplan.pdf
italics added The NRP is fully operational: the militarisation of emergency procedures is,
in many regards, "a done deal". The NRP is built around emergency procedures in the case of a "terrorist
attack": it focuses on ":incident management". It is endorsed
by lead federal agencies and government departments (including the CIA and the
DoD). Deployment in the case of a major civilian emergency (e.g. hurricane and/or
avian flu pandemic) would be governed by the same criteria in conformity with
the basic tenets of the "war on terrorism". The latter also characterize
the workings of FEMA. The Militarization of "Civil Society" Relief Organizations The militarisation of disaster relief has also been endorsed by the American
Red Cross , the Corporation for
National and Community Service and the National
Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (NVOAD) These key organizations
are signatories of the National Response Plan. They have endorsed Homeland Security's
definition of a national emergency. Under the NRP, these key civilian organizations
are directly under the authority of the DHS, FEMA and the Pentagon. Distinct
from the Corporation for National and Community Service, the NVOAD regroups
a large number of individual non-governmental organizations . In signing the
NRP, these organizations have foregone their "civilian" mandate in
disaster relief. In relation to Hurricane Wilma, the DoD has set up a Defense Coordinating Office,
which operates out of the State Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee,
Florida. More significantly, the Pentagon has dispatched US Northern Command officials
to FEMA national headquarters. According to Frances Fragos Townsend, Homeland
Security Adviser to President Bush, the U.S. Northern Command "planners"
have a mandate "to deploy the military if needed." (quoted in Seattle
Times, 22 Oct 2005). Criminal Charges against Bush Administration officials The renewed call for a greater role for the military in the country's civilian
affairs has emerged at a critical political juncture. The Plame-CIA leak investigation,
led by Special Counsel Fitzgerald could result in criminal charges and impeachment
procedures directed against key members of the Bush Cabinet, including Vice
President Dick Cheney. While the "war on terrorism" is still the main pretext for a greater
role of the military, natural disasters constitute a new and innovative justification.
Meanwhile, the humanitarian disaster in the Gulf as well as the perceived threat
of a bird flu pandemic are being used to deflect public attention from the broader
issue of conspiracy and war crimes revealed by counsel Fitzgerald. More generally,
heightened terror alerts or the perceived dangers of an avian flu pandemic,
could also be used to trigger emergency procedures with a view to creating an
atmosphere of fear and intimidation. Congressman Jerrold Nadler, in a letter to the Deputy Attorney General, has
called for Special Counsel Fitzgerald "to expand his investigation to include
a criminal investigation to examine whether the President, the Vice President,
and members of the White House Iraq Group conspired to deliberately deceive
Congress into authorizing the war in Iraq." This initiative follows that of Congressman John Conyers and 90 other Congressional
Democrats who addressed a letter to President Bush regarding "a coordinated
effort to fix the intelligence and facts to justify the war. Congressman Conyers
and other Congressional Democrats on June 16 held an unofficial hearing concerning
the Downing Street Memo that resembled an impeachment inquiry." (See http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=MAN20050702&articleId=622
Congressman Nadler's letter to the Deputy Attorney General points to the "'White
House Iraq Group' whose sole purpose appears to have been to market and sell
a decision to go to war to Congress..." The letter also points to the leaked Downing Street memo: "Although Mr. Fitzgerald’s investigation has yet to determine
whether a crime was committed by any Administration official(s) in leaking
the identity of Wilson's wife as a covert CIA operative, it is abundantly
clear that the White House Iraq Group was engaged in an effort to discredit
revelations of the falsity of the Administration’s justifications for
the war, and to intimidate and punish those who would reveal the truth....
We now know that top Administration officials, including Vice President Cheney’s
Chief of Staff, I. Lewis Libby, misrepresented to the media the scope and
nature of what the U.S. intelligence community knew and didn’t know
about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs before the war. It is self-evident that the Administration cannot investigate itself in this
matter. I therefore urge you to expand the Special Counsel’s investigation
to include these matters crucial to our national security and national integrity." For full text of the letter to the Deputy Attorney General Impeachment An impeachment procedure could be undermined by the Administration in a number
of ways. We recall, in this regard, how Clinton launched punitive bombing raids on the
Sudan and Afghanistan on the day Monica Lewinsky was summoned before a grand
jury in August 1998. The bombing raids immediately contributed to deflecting
attention from the issue of impeachment. (August 21, 1998). Similarly, a few
months later, December 16, 1998, Clinton ordered the bombing of Iraq. The bombs
were dropped on Baghdad on the very same day as the launching of an impeachment
motion in the House of Representatives. Overriding the UN Security Council,
Sec of State Madeleine Albright had ordered the withdrawal of UN weapons inspectors,
who left Iraq on December 15th, a day prior to the impeachment motion. To galvanize public support, Cheney and Rumsfeld could take the opportunity
of the UN report into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq
Hariri, to launch (in collaboration with Israel) punitive bombings against Syria.
Military action against Syria is already contemplated and has been part of the
US military agenda since 2003. An impeachment process directed against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al. would
inevitably undermine the entire neoconservative construct. Iit would also backlash
on the Pentagon's top military brass. If criminal charges are laid, Vice President
Cheney would be one of the main targets: The Oct. 11 grand jury appearance by New York Times reporter Judith Miller
has shifted the focus of attention to Cheney's office. Miller's hour-long
testimony, according to news accounts, focussed on a third meeting that she
had with Cheney's chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby in June 2003—a
month prior to the publication of Valerie Plame's name in a Robert Novak syndicated
column. Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, was "outed"
by Novak as a CIA officer. Novak reported that he had been given Plame's name
by two "senior administration officials," now widely believed to
be Libby and President Bush's chief political counsel Karl Rove. However, Fitzgerald's probe, from the outset, has centered on an obscure
but powerful White House unit, the White House Iraq Group, which was constituted
in July-August 2002, to coordinate all Bush-Cheney Administration efforts
to win support for an Iraq invasion. Rove and Libby, along with White House
Chief of Staff Andrew Card, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, her
deputy Stephen Hadley, White House Counsellor Karen Hughes, and a half-dozen
other White House and NSC senior staffers were all part of the WHIG. (See
Jeffrey Steinberg ) In the eventuality of criminal charges and/or an impeachment procedure, a national
emergency could be used to suspend the legal procedures required to carry out
the indictments against key Bush administration officials. In other words, the Administration could use a national disaster as a pretext
for Martial law, in which case all criminal charges would be thwarted through
the (temporary) suspension of constitutional government. Under a Code Red alert,
US Northern Command (NORTHCOM) would take over the functions of civilian administration. |