Military Police?

ARMY LAW ENFORCEMENT IS INIMICAL TO OUR SYSTEM

In a country that can't tell the army from the police, the army often can't
tell the citizens from the enemy.

The dictatorships in dozens of banana republics demonstrate that.

The army is best kept off the streets, and law enforcement is best left to
the police. The current proposals to use the military to enforce civilian
laws are egregiously misguided.

The founders of our country realized, from their own first-hand experience,
that a strong army enforcing civilian laws was not a good idea in a
democracy. They learned it from the British occupation of the colonies,
against which they rebelled.

In fact, a strong standing army was not something that they envisioned for
the country. Rather, they anticipated a smaller force, augmented by a
militia to be called up as needed.

Unfortunately, it has become necessary to maintain a strong standing
military. But it has not become necessary to use it against our own people,
even in the enforcement of civilian law. We have police agencies that are
trained for that, and police training and mentality is far different from
that of the military.

It is essential to maintain the wide chasm between civilians and the
overwhelming force of the military.

Since 1878, this has been done by the Posse Comitatus Act, which makes it a
crime to use the military to enforce civilian law.

Unfortunately, that act is much weaker than most people generally regard it
- -- weaker by far than a constitutional provision. It allows Congress to
make exceptions. And Congress has amended it several times.

One amendment was passed in 1986 and signed into law by President Ronald
Reagan. It allowed the use of the military domestically to help fight the
so-called war on drugs.

Reagan was a great president, but he was wrong that time. Even his
secretary of defense, the brilliant Casper Weinberger, said so.

Later, a Marine sniper guarding a border shot and killed an innocent
Mexican-American shepherd boy. True, a civilian policeman might have made
the same mistake, but the odds would have been smaller if the sniper had
been trained in maintaining order and not in combat.

In the current war on terror, our military has plenty to keep it busy.
Let's leave domestic law enforcement to the police officers who are trained
for it.

Things aren't so desperate yet that we'd be comfortable with armed soldiers
from Fort Bragg patrolling the streets of Goldsboro.