|
We Need a Full Debate to Stop the Northern Command
by Nancy B. Spannaus
May 23
At this moment, certain anti-Constitutional forces in the United States are plotting to ram through the establishment of a U.S. Army Northern Command, which threatens to create a Caesar-style military dictatorship over both the United States, and Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. This action must be stopped!
The proposed USNORTHCOM was recently described by Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche as the equivalent of Caesar "crossing the Rubicon," to take power. In this modern instance, the Rubicon is the Potomac, and the military would effectively be putting that would-be dictator John Ashcroft and his minions in power, relegating the President himself to a mere figurehead.
Most dangerously, but not surprisingly, this whole proposal is being done without full Congressional reviewand in clear violation of the safeguards put into effect by the Posse Comitatus law of 1878, which banned the use of the military to enforce civilian laws. Apparently pro-Confederacy forces like Ashcroft have turned the tables: in 1878, it was the Confederates who wanted troops out of the South because they were enforcing blacks' voting rights; but today the Confederates want to bring the troops back in, to enforce a dictatorship which denies people their rights.
As many military experts have testified, this expanded military power is not needed to combat a real national emergency, but it could indeed be used for domestic repression.
My opponent, U.S. Senator John Warner, has some questions to answer on this matter. In a recent letter to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Senator Warner said, "Limited use of the military beyond that permitted by existing law might strengthen the nation's ability both to protect against and to respond to events of the sort which we have recently undergone." Not true! We need intelligence and a strategy for cooling down the Clash of Civilizationsnot a new military command!
So, let's not let this "administrative change" slip through into law. Attorney General John Ashcroft has already violated enough civil liberties, and our military is already being misused in bombing actions that are exacerbating, not resolving, crises. It's time for a full debate now, so that we can stop the Northern Command.
|
|