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

Western Rifle Shooters ^ | July 25, 2012 | COL Kevin Benson, USA (ret)

[Travis McGee]

"Small Wars Journel" won't allow even a direct link on Free Republic, but this is all over the web. Go to the WRS link or Google "Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A “Vision” of the Future by Kevin Benson and Jennifer Weber" to read the entire article.

Colonel Benson is on the staff at Fort Leavenworth's war college. This is real-deal FedGov "wargaming" about possible CW2 scenarios on U.S. soil. Once again, these FedGov trolls are putting "white racist tea party terrorists" into their gun sights for their "Homeland" wargame scenarios. Pretty amazing stuff. I encourage you to go to the original link, read it all, and also read the comments following.

[the invisib1e hand]

Sorry, only scanned -- but if your premise is that DHS becomes a domestic police force, you should be aware that it already has. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2914792/posts?page=16#16.

[sauropod]

i’ll go back and look at comments.

Will read article. Thx for posting it.

[Travis McGee]

CW2 Ping

"Small Wars Journel" is a federal establishment "thinktank" journel, and those snots won't allow a direct link on Free Republic. Really, you need to go to the orignial article and read it all. Google "Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A Vision of the Future" by Kevin Benson and Jennifer Weber to find it.

Colonel Benson, USA (ret) is on the staff at the war college at Ft Leavenworth. This is not Prison Planet kookery. This is the real deal.

Out of all possible civil disorder scenarios COL Benson could have envisioned, he chose evil white racist "tea party terrorists" taking over a Southern city.

Naturally, the Glorious Fatherland 5th Army (NORTHCOM) must be sent to South Carolina to crush the rebellion. I kid you not. You have got to read this, even though I can't post the direct link here.

[GenXteacher]

Just some opinions....

1. Most of SC would secede, not just Darlington, and it would be doubtful if the state as a whole did not.

2. The authors of the article are assuming there would be no insurrections in support of that one, elsewhere.

3. If the movement in the article grew at the rate they claimed, the regulars might well find themselves besieged in their bases by organized forces while they were discussing legal statuses and the like.

4. The authors assumed all units remaining loyal, and apparently overlooked the possibility that some might not and in doing so, overlooked the effects of that too.

5. The authors also assumed no foreign powers or entities would involve themselves. There are probably a number of outside groups or nations that would find the dissolution of the US to their advantage and would aid the rebels out of pragmatism, should it be cheap or easy.

[Afterguard]

Sorry. Pure undiluted BS. The Pentagon routinely runs off the wall as well as geopolitically germane games to be prepared for any contingency. Never to be caught flat footed. If true, this is surely one that will be recorded and shelved. The Military at large would decline to participate in anything like this and would likely intervene on the side of the Constitution. Or at least the Posse Comitatus Act. DHS however, is a different matter. Fortunately they still don’t have the footprint it would require to pull this off. And they certainly would not want to participate in the citizen-level blowback from an action like this. Just my $.02.

[Psalm 144]

Not surprising. As of this Summer’s USSCT ruling the Un-tied States is expressly a totalitarian State. At least they are on record now.

[Psalm 144]

“And they certainly would not want to participate in the citizen-level blowback from an action like this”

‘Honey, you lock the door while I am out suppressing the white trash. I’ll be back soon. Don’t open the door if its not me, and don’t let Junior play outside. Really. Luv ya, gotta go kill some rebel scum. Bye.’

[Travis McGee]

COL Benson is not a blogger, and SWJ is not a blog. This is a peer-reviewed essay in an esablishment war-college think tank journel. It passed editorial muster.

The choice of “racist tea party rebels” as the villains in the scenario was not random.

If you believe that it was randomly chosen, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you very cheap, but only today. Since you are such a smart fellow, you will appreciate a true deal.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Those bitter clingers always cause the trouble. Especially the ones in the South. LOL!!

[DuncanWaring]

Ann Barnhardt also has a write-up on this, last night.

http://www.barnhardt.biz/

She’s got a link to the cited article.

[CodeToad]

The article is so full of lies, distortions, and assumptions never having been fact, as to be laughable. However, it does go to show there are some in the federal government and the military that believe in liberal dominance and lead their lives through fear and ignorance of conservative patriotic American values. These people are completely ignorant of our nation’s founding principles and believe if .fed wants it then .fed gets it and we had better like it because no matter what it is legal.

These are the pinheads we prepare to fight off when they attack.

The article was written as a full court press of liberal propaganda, but these people will be the ones making decisions to attack and the article gives insight as to why they think they must.

[Afterguard]

Still BS. But thanks for the offer.

[Repeal The 17th]

“... 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...”
-
IF it ever gets that bad, I figure the rebellion will be county-by-county.
The urban areas will be lawless “no-mans-land”.

“Support Your Local Sheriff”

[DTogo]

Col Benson should have his head examined or become a pundit on MSNBC. Bogus "Tea Party Militia" theories like these always have overtones of racism, anti-immigrant, and the KKK.

Try as they might, they fall flat because to date the Tea Party's record has been:

0 confrontations with Law Enforcement
0 arrests for violence
0 arrests for property damage
0 arrests for anything

Compare that to OWS, a weekend in Chicago, or racially motivated flash mobs for lootings or beatings. Mordor-on-the-Potomac simply fears We the People, our resurrected knowledge of our founding principles, and that over 10 million firearms have been sold each year since Soetoro's election.

[AuntB]

“Once again, these FedGov trolls are putting “white racist tea party terrorists” into their gun sights for their “Homeland” wargame scenarios. Pretty amazing stuff”

AMazing indeed, when you consider there has never been a crime committed or any one ever harmed by a ‘tea party’ terrorist! BUT Americans are murdered every day by illegal aliens while the gates are thrown open for more of them.

No one is this stupid, this invasion is by design.

[Errant]

I just finished reading this:

Get your boat ready!

[Chode]

UP!!!

i wonder where this guy's loyalties really are? did HE lay out the scenario blaming the TP or was it laid out for him???

[Steel Wolf]

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.

[antisocial]

bflr