Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A “Vision” of the Future (CW2 Ping)

The Great Recession of the early twenty-first century lasts far longer than anyone anticipated. After a change in control of the White House and Congress in 2012, the governing party cuts off all funding that had been dedicated to boosting the economy or toward relief. The United States economy has flatlined, much like Japan’s in the 1990s, for the better part of a decade. By 2016, the economy shows signs of reawakening, but the middle and lower-middle classes have yet to experience much in the way of job growth or pay raises. Unemployment continues to hover perilously close to double digits, small businesses cannot meet bankers’ terms to borrow money, and taxes on the middle class remain relatively high. A high-profile and vocal minority has directed the public’s fear and frustration at nonwhites and immigrants. After almost ten years of race-baiting and immigrant-bashing by right-wing demagogues, nearly one in five Americans reports being vehemently opposed to immigration, legal or illegal, and even U.S.-born nonwhites have become occasional targets for mobs of angry whites.

In May 2016 an extremist militia motivated by the goals of the “tea party” movement takes over the government of Darlington, South Carolina, occupying City Hall, disbanding the city council, and placing the mayor under house arrest. Activists remove the chief of police and either disarm local police and county sheriff departments or discourage them from interfering. In truth, this is hardly necessary. Many law enforcement officials already are sympathetic to the tea party’s agenda, know many of the people involved, and have made clear they will not challenge the takeover. The militia members are organized and have a relatively well thought-out plan of action.

With Darlington under their control, militia members quickly move beyond the city limits to establish “check points” – in reality, something more like choke points -- on major transportation lines. Traffic on I-95, the East Coast’s main north-south artery; I-20; and commercial and passenger rail lines are stopped and searched, allegedly for “illegal aliens.” Citizens who complain are immediately detained. Activists also collect “tolls” from drivers, ostensibly to maintain public schools and various city and county programs, but evidence suggests the money is actually going toward quickly increasing stores of heavy weapons and ammunition. They also take over the town web site and use social media sites to get their message out unrestricted.

When the leaders of the group hold a press conference to announce their goals, they invoke the Declaration of Independence and argue that the current form of the federal government is not deriving its “just powers from the consent of the governed” but is actually “destructive to these ends.” Therefore, they say, the people can alter or abolish the existing government and replace it with another that, in the words of the Declaration, “shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” While mainstream politicians and citizens react with alarm, the “tea party” insurrectionists in South Carolina enjoy a groundswell of support from other tea party groups, militias, racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, anti-immigrant associations such as the Minutemen, and other right-wing groups. At the press conference the masked militia members’ uniforms sport a unit seal with a man wearing a tricorn hat and carrying a musket over the motto “Today’s Minutemen.” When a reporter asked the leaders who are the “red coats” the spokesman answered, “I don’t know who the redcoats are…it could be federal troops.” Experts warn that while these groups heretofore have been considered weak and marginal, the rapid coalescence among them poses a genuine national threat.

The mayor of Darlington calls the governor and his congressman. He cannot act to counter the efforts of the local tea party because he is confined to his home and under guard. The governor, who ran on a platform that professed sympathy with tea party goals, is reluctant to confront the militia directly. He refuses to call out the National Guard. He has the State Police monitor the roadblocks and checkpoints on the interstate and state roads but does not order the authorities to take further action. In public the governor calls for calm and proposes talks with the local tea party to resolve issues. Privately, he sends word through aides asking the federal government to act to restore order. Due to his previous stance and the appearance of being “pro” tea party goals the governor has little political room to maneuver.

The Department of Homeland Security responds to the governor’s request by asking for defense support to civil law enforcement. After the Department of Justice states that the conditions in Darlington and surrounding areas meet the conditions necessary to invoke the Insurrection Act, the President invokes it.

§ 331 – Suppress an insurrection against a State government at the request of the Legislature or, if not in session, the Governor.

§ 333 – Suppress insurrection or domestic violence if it (1) hinders the execution of the laws to the extent that a part or class of citizens are deprived of Constitutional rights and the State is unable or refuses to protect those rights or (2) obstructs the execution of any Federal law or impedes the course of justice under Federal laws.)

By proclamation he calls on the insurrectionists to disperse peacefully within 15 days. There is no violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. The President appoints the Attorney General and the Department of Justice as the lead federal agency to deal with the crisis. The President calls the South Carolina National Guard to federal service. The Joint Staff in Washington, D.C., alerts U.S. Northern Command, the headquarters responsible for the defense of North America, to begin crisis action planning. Northern Command in turn alerts U.S. Army North/Fifth U.S. Army for operations as a Joint Task Force headquarters. Army units at Fort Bragg, N.C.; Fort Stewart, Ga.; and Marines at Camp Lejuene, N.C. go on alert. The full range of media, national and international, is on scene.

Upon receiving the alert for possible operations in Darlington, the Fifth Army staff begins the military decision making process with mission analysis and intelligence preparation of the battlefield. (Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield is the term applied to the procedures performed by the intelligence staff of all Army unit headquarters in the development of bases of information on the enemy, terrain and weather, critical buildings and facilities in a region and other points. Army units conduct operations on the basis of this information. The term is in Army doctrine and could be problematic when conducted in advance of operations on U.S. soil. The general form of the initial intelligence estimate is in figure 1.) In developing the intelligence estimate military intelligence planners will confront the first constraints on the conduct of full spectrum operations in the United States, as well as constraints on supporting law enforcement. The analytical steps of the Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield, or IPB, must be modified in preparing for and conducting operations in the homeland.

The steps of the IPB process are: define the operational environment/battlespace, describe environmental effects on operations/describe battlespace effects, evaluate the threat/adversary, and determine threat/adversary courses of action. (PSYOP was changed to Military Information Support Operations, MISO, by Secretary of Defense directive in June 2010.)

While preparing terrain and weather data do not pose a major problem to the G-2, gathering data on the threat and under civil considerations for intelligence and operational purposes is problematic to say the leasst.

This is an interesting scenario. Having worked CT and counterinsurgency for the U.S. government for more than a long weekend, here's my key takeaways on this. BLUF, the Colonel has imagined himself a 'perfect storm' for the DHS to sail to glory upon, without realizing that his ship is full of holes.

By 2016, the economy shows signs of reawakening, but the middle and lower-middle classes have yet to experience much in the way of job growth or pay raises. Unemployment continues to hover perilously close to double digits, small businesses cannot meet bankers’ terms to borrow money, and taxes on the middle class remain relatively high. A high-profile and vocal minority has directed the public’s fear and frustration at nonwhites and immigrants.

Here’s the very, very first mistake. The author unintentional sets up a real bad guy for the insurgency, and creates a false one that ignores their actual motivations. The root cause of the ‘insurrection’ is the economic profligacy of the government. While for the sake of lazy writing the author then adds on a spurious charge of racism (because that sells better) in reality, this amounts to the first mistake in intelligence collection, which is to not understand the motives of your opponent. This renders any predictive analysis compromised, and leads to a damaged course of action assessment. For instance:

The mayor of Darlington calls the governor and his congressman. He cannot act to counter the efforts of the local tea party because he is confined to his home and under guard. The governor, who ran on a platform that professed sympathy with tea party goals, is reluctant to confront the militia directly. He refuses to call out the National Guard. He has the State Police monitor the roadblocks and checkpoints on the interstate and state roads but does not order the authorities to take further action. In public the governor calls for calm and proposes talks with the local tea party to resolve issues. Privately, he sends word through aides asking the federal government to act to restore order. Due to his previous stance and the appearance of being “pro” tea party goals the governor has little political room to maneuver.

So, what the author is admitting here is that the movement isn’t an isolated, fringe event, but in fact has so much popular support that even the state government, local police and military is largely behind it. That is not a fact to gloss over. That's trying to save a burning house while surrounded by an forest fire. The author hopes to thread the 'good Taliban/bad Taliban' needle, but that invariably is a self-delusion that bites us in the ass.

1. How much support does the movement have in other states? If the federal government has run the nation so deep into the ground that it makes armed revolution attractive, it stands to reason that these sentiments are not confined to South Carolina, and exist in large percentages elsewhere.

2. How much media support does it have?
a. Is the insurgency media-savvy? It’s nice to hope they’re mindless brutes, but do they have any charismatic leaders, websites, arguments, videos? It seems they start out quoting the Declaration of Independence.
b. What if they avoid overt racist themes and stick to very Constitutional arguments?

3. How much will media coverage make them popular? Even if the spin is negative, public opinion may be just as hostile to the national media as it apparently has become to the national government.
a. Will mass coverage of a pro-Constitutional uprising backfire and make them more popular?

4. How much support does the movement have within the government? Even at 5%, you’re looking at having people within the national security architecture who have access to some level of TS/SCI information. At levels so high that the state and local military units don’t want to participate, and the state government is reluctant, you’re looking at closer to 50%, with access to practically everything you’d want to keep secret, which is like working with Iraqi security units made up of Mahdi Army militia members or Afghan terps who are Taliban sympathizers. And there will be sympathizers, from the local police up to the DHS/FBI/NSA itself. They’ll telegraph everything you do right as you start to do it. They'll sabotage efforts and equipment. Lead DHS troops into traps or reveal their movements. Publicize their mistakes. The whole architecture will be compromised by the ones who are most likely to seek out that type of employment in the first place. People who are willing to risk their lives for their country.

Having ten enemies within the wire is worse than having 100 outside it. And yet the author’s saying that the influence of the insurgency is already so high that they need to go out of state for help? That means the entire state, if not the nation, is a powder keg dangling over a bonfire.

5. What is the national political situation like? All this focuses in on poor little South Carolina in isolation.
a. What are the second order effects of launching a counterinsurgency effort on U.S. soil during a period of economic hardship?
b. Where are #OWS, anti-war leftists and other peacenik elements, and do they support military operations in 'flyover country'?
c. Where are the other Tea Party elements?
d. Would any of the above groups strike at the government elsewhere?
e. Would the government really leave *no* contingencies for a nation-wide crackdown?
f. How would a nation-wide crackdown be met with public approval?

The nation is likely already on the edge; how far would an effort like this have to go before it spiraled out of control? Four weeks? Four months? The funny thing about insurgencies is that the tend to last several years longer that you'd like.

6. What happens when the first government-led massacre takes place? Not an intentional one, but a gunfight where innocents are inadvertently killed via government heavy weapons, and the video makes it on to you tube as part of a ‘cover up expose’. Naturally, the government won’t want to advertise these things, even if they are just accidents. But it *will* look like a cover up, and many Americans will turn from the government, or say “I didn’t sign up for this”.

7. What is the ROE going to be?
a. What happens when the ROE is so tight, that the insurgents realize they can surrender, have media circus trials, and then go to prison and proselyze? We used to call the detention facilities ‘terrorist college’ because they’d go in amateurs and come out experts. Not just in expertise, but radicalized in philosophy.
b. What happens when the ROE is so loose, than bloody videos start appearing, and the government tries to suppress them?

8. What is the I/O plan? If the Evil Tea Party is waving the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, how do you counter that message?
a. How do you target people on the fence?
b. How do you soften people on the insurgent side?

As the great helmsman reminds us, "The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea." How do you separate the guerrillas from the people? Well, you can smear them with charges of racism, but what if the people come to believe that you’re smearing them because you’ve economically destroyed the country and shredded the Constitution? At a certain point, having a bad I/O plan is worse than having no plan, e.g. keeping your mouth shut is better than exposing yourself as a hypocrite. But without a good I/O plan, and in the face of an insurgency that speaks the language of the people, you’ll find that the waters of revolution run too deep to catch them, and quickly prove to be too deep to swim in wearing full body armor.

Anyway, these are the major red flags that occur to me based off the scenario. It's the kind of thing that led us into disaster in Iraq and a long, expensive stalemate in Afghanistan. The good Colonel seems to be cherry picking himself a very rosy scenario without looking at the potential consequences, which apparently has yet to go out of style, even after ten years of adventure in the Middle East.

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