Will US Soldiers Take Our Guns? "A Critical Decision"

[Lambo]

A Critical Decision
by Michael Gaddy via lewrockwell.com

Members of all branches of the United States Military will soon be facing a most critical decision. The European Union Times is reporting here that Obama is using the deployment of additional troops to Afghanistan to cover for the movement of some 200,000 troops, presently on duty in countries other than Iraq and Afghanistan, to USNORTHCOM to prepare for the "expected outbreak of Civil War within the United States before the end of winter."

It would appear those who call themselves "public servants" believe the people they supposedly serve have become dissatisfied with their job performance and will resort to some form of civil disobedience, which will necessitate military intervention. According to the article, Obama believes the reason for this civil unrest to be an expected "implosion" of this country’s financial systems. Should these events occur, members of the military would be forced to decide whether they would support their government, which gave hundreds of billions to government cronies in the financial sector, or their country.

A prudent man would speculate if the government so fears coming civil unrest, will they move to seize firearms throughout the country and use these military forces along with law enforcement to do so? I believe the answer can be found in the events surrounding the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Government forces there not only seized firearms from private citizens but also relocated many citizens against their will.

Millions of Americans have prayed for the safety of the military as they fight the government’s wars all over the planet. Many believe the military to be defending the country from enemies that would take our weapons and our freedoms. What will their actions be when the US military becomes that enemy? Will the military willingly participate in such acts? Such are questions the future holds.

The government has spent decades defining those who oppose its unlawful exploits as enemies of the state. Those who can or will not differentiate between the government and the country have fallen hook, line and sinker for this demonization of those who demand the government operate within the constraints of the Constitution and moral law. Most of those who blindly support the illegal actions of the government have been bought and paid for with the taxes of those who actually produce something. Unfortunately, primary among those bought-and-paid-for entities are law enforcement and the military.

Both political parties have conducted this demonization of true Patriots. While the democrats have been traditionally anti-gun and liberty, the republicans bought into the program with the fascist Patriot Act and the illegal, unconstitutional War on Terror. The two dominant political parties in this country are two wings of the same vulture: blatant in-your-face socialism. There are no answers to our problems to be found in either political party.

Many on the right have bought into the ideas expressed by leaders of the military that all who oppose the state and its illegal agenda should be treated no differently than the "insurgents" the military has been facing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nowhere is that better illustrated than here where a law enforcement publication is advocating military tactics promoted by General David Petraeus be used against those whom the state defines as its enemies. While the article in Guns and Weapons for Law Enforcement speaks specifically of gangs and drug activity, don’t forget the Department of Homeland Security has defined millions of patriotic Americans and veterans as possible domestic terrorists in its report sent to LE agencies on April 7th of 2009. If you wonder if you fit the definition of possible domestic terrorist, you should check here.

If the European Union Times report is correct and Obama is moving to strengthen USNORTHCOM with anywhere near the numbers mentioned, indicates the fedgov fears its own citizens much more than it fears al Qaeda. Either the government is anticipating a total financial breakdown, there are plans to confiscate firearms, a new false flag event is in the works, or any combination of the three. Either way, they plan on this event occurring before spring of 2010.

On the minds of many Americans and politicians is exactly how will the military and law enforcement react if told to confiscate firearms or move American citizens to FEMA camps.

Consideration must be given to the militarization of law enforcement entities in this country over the past few decades and our gradual decline into a police state, thanks to the bogus War on Terror. That being said, some police blogs such as this one indicate not all law enforcement personnel are on board with these illegal and corrupt practices. When considering possible actions of military personnel one must be aware of the felons and gang members who became part of the military when recruiters were falling short of their goals. Nothing could be better for a felon or a gang-banger than to actually be ordered to commit crimes with impunity. At some point in time, any true American serving in the military will be forced to ask themselves exactly what and whom they are defending and exactly what became of the "home of the free?"

What will be the reaction of the soldier from Colorado who is confiscating guns and placing so-called domestic terrorists in detention camps in Ohio when he gets word other soldiers are doing the same to his family and friends back home? Who will soldiers and law enforcement officers side with when push comes to shove: the government who has given over a trillion dollars to their cronies in the financial industry, failed to provide their brother/sister veterans competent medical care, denied disability benefits, denied compensation for treatment as prisoners of war, placed single parents in confinement and taken their children, or their family and friends who have lost their jobs and are seeing their homes and farms foreclosed by the same bankers who received huge bonuses from the bailout money? If military and law enforcement personnel begin to side with the citizens, will the fedgov call in United Nations forces to subdue those who cherish personal freedom and will fight to retain it?

Regardless of which series of events occur, Americans will be the losers. Brace yourselves and prepare, this is going to get real ugly.

Link Please

[MrBi11]

Perhaps a History lesson is in order

Bonus Army:


The self-named Bonus Expeditionary Force was an assemblage of some 43,000 marchers — 17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups, who protested in Washington, D.C., in spring and summer of 1932. Called the Bonus March by the news media, the Bonus Marchers were more popularly known as the Bonus Army. It was led by Walter W. Waters, a former Army sergeant. The veterans were encouraged in their demand for immediate cash-payment redemption of their service certificates by retired U.S.M.C. Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, one of the most popular military figures of the time.

The war veterans, many of whom had been out of work since the beginning of the Great Depression, sought immediate cash payment of Service Certificates granted to them eight years earlier via the Adjusted Service Certificate Law of 1924. Each Service Certificate, issued to a qualified veteran soldier, bore a face value equal to the soldier's promised payment, plus compound interest. The problem was that the certificates (like bonds), matured twenty years from the date of original issuance, thus, under extant law, the Service Certificates could not be redeemed until 1945.

The 1932 march was brutally suppressed by U.S. Army troops under the leadership of Douglas MacArthur and George S. Patton. After his election, Franklin D. Roosevelt, offered members of the Bonus Army work building the Overseas Highway in the Florida Keys. In 1936 Congress, overriding Roosevelt's veto, allowed the veterans to redeem their certificates early.


Background

The practice of war-time military bonuses began in 1776, as payment for the difference between what a soldier earned and what he could have earned had he not enlisted.[1] Before World War One, the soldier's military service bonus (adjusted for rank) was land and money — a Continental Army private received 100 acres (40 ha) and $80.00 at war's end while a Maj. Gen. received 1,100 acres (450 ha). In 1855, Congress increased the land-grant minimum to 160 acres (65 ha), and reduced the eligibility requirements to fourteen days of military service, or one battle; moreover, the bonus also applied to veterans of any Indian war.[2] Breaking with tradition, the veterans of the Spanish-American War did not receive a bonus, and, after World War One, their not receiving a military service bonus became a political matter when World War I veterans received only a $60 bonus. In 1919, the American Legion was created, and led a political movement for an additional bonus.

In 1924, over-riding President Calvin Coolidge's veto, Congress legislated compensation for veterans to recognize their war-time suffering: receive a dollar for each day of domestic service, to a maximum of $500; and $1.25 for each day of overseas service, to a maximum of $625. Amounts owed of $50 or less were immediately paid; greater sums were issued as certificates of service maturing in 20 years.

Some 3,662,374 military service certificates were issued, with a face value of $3.638 billion. Congress established a trust fund to receive 20 annual payments of $112 million that, with interest, would finance the $3.638 billion dollars owed to the veterans in 1945. Meanwhile, veterans could borrow up to 22.5% of the certificate's face value from the fund. In 1931, because of the Great Depression, Congress increased the loan value to 50 percent of the certificate's face value; yet, by April 1932, loans amounting to $1.248 billion dollars had been paid, leaving a $2.36-billion-dollar deficit. Although there was Congressional support for the immediate redemption (payment) of the military service certificates, President Hoover and Republican congressmen opposed that, because it would negatively affect the Federal Government's budget and Depression-relief programs. Meanwhile, veterans organizations pressed the Federal Government to allow the early redemption of their military service certificates.

Arrival in Washington

The Bonus Army massed at the United States Capitol on June 17 as the U.S. Senate voted on the Patman Bonus Bill, which would have moved forward the date when World War I veterans received a cash bonus. Most of the Bonus Army camped in a Hooverville on the Anacostia Flats, then a swampy, muddy area across the Anacostia River from the federal core of Washington. The camps, built from materials scavenged from a nearby rubbish dump, were tightly controlled by the veterans with streets laid out, sanitation facilities built and parades held daily. To live in the camps, veterans were required to register and prove they had been honorably discharged. The protesters had hoped that they could convince Congress to make payments that would be granted to veterans immediately, which would have provided relief for the marchers who were unemployed due to the Depression. The bill had passed the House of Representatives on June 15 but was blocked in the Senate.

U.S. Army intervenes


On 28 July, 1932, Attorney General Mitchell ordered the police evacuation of the Bonus Army veterans, who resisted; the police shot at them, and killed two. When told of the killings, President Hoover ordered the U.S. Army to effect the evacuation of the Bonus Army from Washington, D.C.

At 4:45 p.m., commanded by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the 12th Infantry Regiment, Fort Howard, Maryland, and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, supported by six battle tanks commanded by Maj. George S. Patton, Fort Myer, Virginia, formed in Pennsylvania Avenue while thousands of Civil Service employees left work to line the street and watch the U.S. Army attack its own veterans. The Bonus Marchers, believing the display was in their honour, cheered the troops until Maj. Patton charged the cavalry against them — an action which prompted the Civil Service employee spectators to yell, "Shame! Shame!"

After the cavalry charge, infantry, with fixed bayonets and adamsite gas, entered the Bonus Army camps, evicting veterans, families, and camp followers. The veterans fled across the Anacostia River, to their largest camp; President Hoover ordered the Army assault stopped, however, Gen. MacArthur—feeling this free-speech exercise was a Communist attempt at overthrowing the U.S. Government—ignored the President and ordered a new attack. Hundreds of veterans were injured, several were killed — including William Hushka and Eric Carlson; a veteran's wife miscarried; and many other veterans were hurt.



The Posse Comitatus Act — forbidding civilian police work by the U.S. military — did not apply to Washington, D.C., because it is the federal district directly governed by the U.S. Congress (U.S. Constitution, Article I. Section 8. Clause 17). The exemption was created because of an earlier "Bonus March". In 1781, most of the Continental Army was demobilized without pay, two years later, in 1783, hundreds of Pennsylvania war veterans marched on Philadelphia, surrounded the State House wherein Congress was in session, and demanded their pay. The U.S. Congress fled to Princeton, New Jersey, and, several weeks later, the U.S. Army expelled the war veterans back to home, out of the national capital.

An infant, Bernard Myers, later died in the hospital after the incident but reports indicated the death was not caused by the evacuation of the BEF.

Aftermath


A movie, Gabriel Over the White House, was released by MGM in March 1933 that depicted the Bonus March, but with a more positive outcome. Produced by William Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Pictures, it concerned the actions of "President Hammond" who ends the depression and solves the marchers' problems through authoritarian means, which result in a stable economy, elimination of crime, and creation of world peace.

Following his election, President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not want to pay the bonus early either. In March 1933, Roosevelt issued an executive order allowing the enrollment of 25,000 veterans in the Civilian Conservation Corps for work in forests. When they marched on Washington again in May 1933, he sent his wife Eleanor to chat with the vets and pour coffee with them, and she persuaded many of them to sign up for jobs making a roadway to the Florida Keys, which was to become the Overseas Highway, the southernmost portion of U.S. Route 1. The third-strongest hurricane ever measured, the September 2, 1935 Labor Day hurricane, killed 258 veterans working on the Highway. Most were killed by storm surge flooding. After seeing more newsreels of veterans giving their lives for a government that had taken them for granted, public sentiment built up so much that Congress could no longer afford to ignore it in an election year (1936). Roosevelt's veto was overridden, making the bonus a reality.

Perhaps the Bonus Army's greatest accomplishment was the piece of legislation known as the G. I. Bill of Rights[citation needed]. Passed in July, 1944, it immensely helped veterans from the Second World War to secure needed assistance from the federal government to help them fit back into civilian life, something the World War I veterans of the Bonus Army had not received. The Bonus Army's activities can also be seen as a template for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, and popular political demonstrations and activism that took place in the U.S. later in the 20th century.

[LittleRedToyota]

Link Please

the title ("A Critical Decision" at the top of his post) is clickable.

here is the actual URL:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/gaddy/gaddy75.1.html

[larrymeyer]

Rumor monger who want to scare the gun owners

[PA Rifleman]

Already posted here:

http://forum.pafoa.org/lounge-108/80...tml#post999107

[Dodahdude]

Kent State shootings back in May, 1970. National Guardsmen. Click'ie...

http://images.google.com/images?clie...ed=0CCEQsAQwAw

http://omp.ohiolink.edu/OMP/YourScrapbook?scrapid=16045

[Vismund Cygnus]

Kent State shootings back in May, 1970. National Guardsmen. Click'ie...

http://images.google.com/images?clie...ed=0CCEQsAQwAw

http://omp.ohiolink.edu/OMP/YourScrapbook?scrapid=16045

That was caused by a nervous Guardsmen who inadvertently took a shot and the rest followed suit, thinking something had happened.

[DennisH82]

Been doing this for 32 years and counting, never gonna happen anyone who thinks different needs some more crack.

[Kb! Bob]

Been doing this for 32 years and counting, never gonna happen anyone who thinks different needs some more crack.

I'm not saying this to be a wise-ass, I may very well be mistaken, but during Katrina I think it DID happen.

[DennisH82]

I'm not saying this to be a wise-ass, I may very well be mistaken, but during Katrina I think it DID happen.

I was addressing the wholesale lunacy in believing our military would turn on our own and take weapons from the people. Like every event, their are always the few. If some want to believe that the next knock on their door will be from the Military then so be it, buy plenty of aluminum foil and a pair binos for the pesky black helicopters