Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack

Franks, who successfully led the U.S. military operation to liberate Iraq, expressed his worries in an extensive interview he gave to the men’s lifestyle magazine Cigar Aficionado.

In the magazine’s December edition, the former commander of the military’s Central Command warned that if terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government.

Discussing the hypothetical dangers posed to the U.S. in the wake of Sept. 11, Franks said that “the worst thing that could happen” is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casualties.

If that happens, Franks said, “... the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.”

Franks then offered “in a practical sense” what he thinks would happen in the aftermath of such an attack.

“It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important.”

Already, critics of the U.S. Patriot Act, rushed through Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, have argued that the law aims to curtail civil liberties and sets a dangerous precedent.

But Franks’ scenario goes much further. He is the first high-ranking official to openly speculate that the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government.

The usually camera-shy Franks retired from U.S. Central Command, known in Pentagon lingo as CentCom, in August 2003, after serving nearly four decades in the Army.

Franks earned three Purple Hearts for combat wounds and three Bronze Stars for valor. Known as a “soldier’s general,” Franks made his mark as a top commander during the U.S.’s successful Operation Desert Storm, which liberated Kuwait in 1991. He was in charge of CentCom when Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda attacked the United States on Sept. 11.

Franks said that within hours of the attacks, he was given orders to prepare to root out the Taliban in Afghanistan and to capture bin Laden.

Franks offered his assessment on a number of topics to Cigar Aficionado, including:

President Bush: “As I look at President Bush, I think he will ultimately be judged as a man of extremely high character. A very thoughtful man, not having been appraised properly by those who would say he’s not very smart. I find the contrary. I think he’s very, very bright. And I suspect that he’ll be judged as a man who led this country through a crease in history effectively. Probably we’ll think of him in years to come as an American hero.”

On the motivation for the Iraq war: Contrary to claims that top Pentagon brass opposed the invasion of Iraq, Franks said he wholeheartedly agreed with the president’s decision to invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein.

“I, for one, begin with intent. ... There is no question that Saddam Hussein had intent to do harm to the Western alliance and to the United States of America. That intent is confirmed in a great many of his speeches, his commentary, the words that have come out of the Iraqi regime over the last dozen or so years. So we have intent.

“If we know for sure ... that a regime has intent to do harm to this country, and if we have something beyond a reasonable doubt that this particular regime may have the wherewithal with which to execute the intent, what are our actions and orders as leaders in this country?”

The Pentagon’s deck of cards: Asked how the Pentagon decided to put its most-wanted Iraqis on a set of playing cards, Franks explained its genesis. He recalled that when his staff identified the most notorious Iraqis the U.S. wanted to capture, “it just turned out that the number happened to be about the same as a deck of cards. And so somebody said, ‘Aha, this will be the ace of spades.’”

Capturing Saddam: Franks said he was not surprised that Saddam has not been captured or killed. But he says he will eventually be found, perhaps sooner than Osama bin laden.

“The capture or killing of Saddam Hussein will be a near term thing. And I won’t say that’ll be within 19 or 43 days. ... I believe it is inevitable.”

Franks ended his interview with a less-than-optimistic note. “It’s not in the history of civilization for peace ever to reign. Never has in the history of man. ... I doubt that we’ll ever have a time when the world will actually be at peace.”

General Franks, who is retired, was citing what would probably happen.

Martial Law was declared several times in the last century, often during dangerous race riots in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921, then in Detroit, Watts, and in the DC area during riots after MKL was killed.

In DC the military with Douglas McArthur in charge was called out to control the veterans marching and rioting after WWI.

Below is the result of the search for Martial Law in the USA.

http://search.yahoo.com/search?x=op&va=Watts+Riots%2C+Martial+Law&va_vt=any&vst=0&vd=all&fl=0&ei=ISO-8859-1&vm=p&n=20

Law and order was reclaimed. The bad situation cooled off and people started to return to their normal life. The troops were then sent home.

The link below has a limited review of the use of Martial in the last century:

http://www.culture-of-peace.info/intervention/chapter4-10.html

Internal military interventions have continued at a high rate since World War II, but the target has shifted. Labor interventions have continued, but at a lower rate, and the most massive interventions have been against urban rioters. As shown in Table III, over 200,000 troops were used during the period 1961-8 to control what was called 'civil disturbances', and probably almost as many more during the period 1969- 76, when detailed records were not published.

Interventions against urban riots are not new. In 1919, martial law was declared in order to control riots in Washington, DC, and by 27 July the force had grown to 12,000 troops under the command of Army General Haan (High, 1969, p. 121). Similarly, in 1943 about 6,000 federal troops and 5,000 National Guard were deployed after urban riots struck Detroit (Lee & Humphrey, 1943, p. 44).

However, the extent of riot interventions in recent years surpasses anything seen before in US history: 13,398 National Guard in Watts in 1965, 10,253 National Guard and 4, 700 federal troops in Detroit in 1967, and the list goes on. In the Los Angeles riots of 1992, the government deployed 2,800 National Guard with another 3,200 standby, and 4,000 marines and US Army troops.

Two other types of internal military intervention have also been prominent in the recent period: civil rights enforcement, and control of anti-war demonstrations. During the 19505 and 19605 over 100,000 troops were engaged in enforcing civil rights legislation and protecting civil rights demonstrators in the South. And during the 1960s and 1970s, tens of thousands of troops were used to control anti-war activities, largely associated with the student movements at the time of the war in Vietnam.

The rate of use of troops since 1943 has been somewhat higher than the rate in earlier periods. The average of 14,000 troops per year from 1943 to 1990 compares to an average of over 10,000 per year from 1886 to 1895 and an average of 8,000 per year for the years in which data were available from 1921 to 1935. Of course, the increase may be related to the population increase, since the US population has expanded fourfold in these years.

Despite the decrease in the quantity of interventions in labor disputes in recent years, there is still an important qualitative effect. The 1970 intervention of 30,000 federal troops to take over the jobs of striking postal workers sent a message to government employees that all means would be used to break their strikes. And the 1982 intervention of 1,248 military air traffic controllers to replace strikers was seen by organized labor as a signal from the incoming Reagan Administration that it would not hesitate to use the military not only to break a strike, but to destroy a national trade union.

One may argue that the shift from labor to urban riot interventions reflects the consequences of the victory of capital over organized labor and the extension of class warfare from organized labor to the unemployed. There is no question that urban riots are related to the unemployment and under-employment that has resulted from the flight of industry out of the unionized Northern cities toward non-union areas in the South, rural areas, and overseas. During this time the strength of organized labor has declined greatly, to the point that today less than half the proportion of workers are in unions as compared to the period immediately after World War II. As Robin Higham puts it in his introduction to Bayonets in the Streets (1969, pp. 1-2), although 'money has not been everything' :

Money has, of course, been at the heart of most of the problems in which the military have been used in civil peacekeeping roles. Money and working conditions have been at the heart of labor disturbances. Money has been a major ingredient of the complex problems of the inner cities. Money has been a major factor in the expansion and equipping of police forces to deal with the increasingly sophisticated and complex problems of the protection of property and the control of crime in the United States.

If, for any reason, the U.S. Constitution is declared or rendered invalid, the federal government ceases to exist as a legal entity. All those people running around trying to tell the people what to do and where to go, will be no more valid than any other self-possessed band of thugs, regardless of their armament.

The people are the sovereigns in this nation, and no legal authority exists without the consent of the people.

You are exactly correct, and I'd observe that the circumstances you describe are viewed identically by more than half of the officers above company grade [above Captains] with whom I serve.

Opinions vary on what to do under such circumstances, how best to do it, and what priorities and assignments would be involved in attempting to do so. But I have no doubt that if no other competent leader began to do so, one of our number would take a big breath and do so. I pray to God that I would not be the one so cursed.

-archy-/-

I saw a citizens militia training on Moore's "Bowling for Clumbine" - (I think it was the Montana Militia, but I am sure this applies to all militias)--each member had a different weapon, using different bullet calibers and all were fat - out of shape- middle aged for the most part. A citizens militia of this type would fold within a few minutes against even National Guard troops.
Every "militia" I have witnessed was in such condition-which to me seemed more like a militaria club (club where you play act as a soldier) rather than a true, uniformed (as in having uniform weapons and training) citizens militia. Sadly.

You would think that one such unit sufficiently squared away with common equipment and similar uniforms would be similarly effective in their security procedures as well, and that such as filmmaker Moore would be most unlikely to ever have any contact with such a unit on any sort of terms that he'd find agreeable. Assuming, of course, that the *militia* depicted in his film were not paid actors, which would be unsurprising.

But it is not necessarily a given that dependence on a standard weapon or caliber of weapon would necessarily be advisable at a time when ammunition would be in short supply. Indeed, a variety of chamberings of personal weapons with which the users are familiar limits any inconvenience if a shortage of a common caliber ammunition exists, or is in competition with crew-served weapons for use.

I would expect that in such conditions that the two most common weapons seen would be the .22 caliber semiautomatic rifle and the 12-gauge shitgun, probably shortened for more convenient use in either exampple. And any unit standardized on the same weapon for about 50% of its personnel would be at least equal to the present US military forces in that respect.

Count on former Marines to be pretty testy about abandoning their former Eagle, Globe and Anchor, or at a minimum the initials U.S.M. C. applied very near their hearts.

-archy-/-

1971 was a time when our "enemies within" (i.e., the "anti-war" pro-communist crowd) had built a lot of momentum. They virtually controlled how the war and events in general were viewed. Despite that Nixon was re-elected in 1972 with 520 to 17 electoral votes. Americans opposed the New Left Dem's "anti-war," "America is hopelessly racist and vile" alternative.

To be fair most Americans by then recognized that this had been a "no win" war. At least in Korea the North Koreans and Chinese were pushed out of South Korea. Just a few years before that W.W.II ended with unconditional surrender by all of our enemies. From the beginning our "best and brightest" leaders' no-win, graduated response methods failed at the cost of far, far too many lives. The American public had been snookered.

Nothing special happened in 1971, 1968 would have been better but it would have required really bold action. The North was astounded that the American press reported that the Tet offensive was their victory. It encouraged them to continue. After the war the American press won the praise of General Giap as his most valuable guerilla.

After four solid years of major combat here was a chance to end the war by winning all the battles. Instead the military was attacked by the left as incapable of winning -- which, of course, is what the left wanted. Had the military acted then the war could have ended, the New Left would have been destroyed and they would not control so much of our society including the once great Democrat party. IMO.

I can't resist, sorry. Nothing personal. But I've seen others say that a mind that opens as a parachute risks having the brains fall out. :>)

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