JUST FINE

Military, Police Roles Must Remain Separate

In America's long history we have been blessed with a proper
differentiation between military and civilian functions. This has allowed
us to keep our civil liberties at home while keeping the military honed for
defending the country. That's why Congress should reject an idea raised
recently by the Bush administration to weaken the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.

"The act is a statutory form of an American tradition of not getting the
military involved in police work," said Gene Healy, a constitutional law
attorney and senior editor at the Cato Institute. "What has been discussed
is the civilian support by the military in the event of rather unusual
circumstances," Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said on CNN's "Late
Edition."

The act served us well through two world wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam
War, the Cold War, the Gulf War and many other wars. The war on terrorism
is not the time to change the law. Soviet spies stealing nuclear and other
secrets probably were more a danger than al-Qaida. Yet stopping the spies
at home was left to the FBI, not the Marines.

Healy also pointed out that the military and civilian components have
different functions. "The military is a blunt instrument," he said. "It's
effective for destroying entire companies of enemy troops or blowing up
terrorists in caves in the mountains. But it's not effective at stopping a
shoe bomber on a plane." Civilian missions also dull the military's
fighting spirit, making it less effective when it's called on to do its
real job.

Likewise, civilian police have a different function. They're supposed to
show restraint in dealing with suspects who are presumed innocent. However,
at Ruby Ridge in 1992 and Waco in 1993, civilian forces acted like the
military and killed civilian suspects as well as innocent bystanders.

Unfortunately, in 1981 Congress weakened the Posse Comitatus act to allow
the military to engage in the drug war. This led to tragedy in 1997 when
Marines on a drug interdiction patrol along Texas' border with Mexico shot
and killed Ezequiel Hernandez, an innocent teen-ager who was tending goats
on his family's farm.

Involving the military in civilian law enforcement "is dangerous to our
political order," warned Healy. "We don't want to become like Northern
Ireland, Colombia or Indonesia and see armed soldiers marching down the
streets."