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Quote by: HelioPrime  Sooooooooo...
Is the fear here:
A) The military will take begin martial law enforcement in cities and communities?
B) The military will be used to oppress a hostile takeover by key government players that throws out democracy and the courts?
C) Some other tin hat fantasy?
Isn't it possible this is just what it is: Training additional troops to use in the duties the guards have been used in for years: Disaster relief, unrest protection, ensuring civil order, etc... |
As far as "A" goes, I assume you don't know what "Posse Comitatus" is. Essentially, that prohibits US troops from acting as policemen.
If we need more cops, let's hire more cops. It's as simple as that. Federal troops don't belong inside the country as law enforcement.
"B", the armed forces are under the control of the president. If he were to use them under the guise of enforcing the FEMA, for example, he could do that all on his own.
Again, we HAVE the police and the FBI. We don't need troops.
As for "C":, I don't automatically ignore all conspiracy theories with the cliche "tinfoil hat" dismissal, as they are often based in fact. One thing to remember is not to put too much faith in our government to work in the best interests of the people when the people no longer to their duty and keep an eye on them. What makes you think that we cannot elect unfit or criminal politicians when all we do is vote by party or whoever has the best slogan and then let them do whatever they like?
One last point. Government rarely does anything fast. If the metaphor "slippery slope" can be rightly applied to anyone, it would be our government. They more often make a relatively small change which doesn't work and them make it worse by "fixing" it, which leads to further changes until you have a major debacle on your hands.
The reaction to stringent regulations on the financial sector is a good example. When they decided the banks were too regulated (a debatable point anyway), in their wisdom they pushed for almost NO regulation, naively assuming they would police themselves, which led to what we have now. Of course, the same people in Congress now claim to be able to "fix" the situation by throwing borrowed money at the very people who caused the meltdown in the first place.
In this case, it's likely that once the troops are stationed in the country on a permanent basis, for whatever the reason, eventually someone will say "You know, since the troops are already here, why not use them for something else?"
But you sounds like you have a lot of faith in our elected representatives, so you might not see it the same way.