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Some ask if America is becoming a police state. Regular readers of this blog will already have a pretty good idea of what my opinion is, but it occurs to me that perhaps the most important thing to stress is that this mostly isn’t a well-demarcated, “either-or” sort of thing. At any one point in time, it could be said that such things are all a subjective matter of shades of gray. Eventually, though, it’ll be to awkward to point out that it’s become pitch black.

As Garet Garrett wrote:

“There was no painted sign to say: ‘You now are entering Imperium.’ Yet it was a very old road and the voice of history was saying: ‘Whether you know it or not, the act of crossing may be irreversible.’ And now, not far ahead, is a sign that reads: ‘No U-turns.’”

While some will, or must, deny that darkness is descending, one way to get one’s bearings is to pay attention to how merely reading the news has become an exercise in Kremlinology. If you have (and use) critical thinking skills, strong indications that policy decisions may have been made for reasons other than their publicly stated rationale practically leap out at one constantly. The challenge then becomes a matter of how to avoid letting one’s speculation about such matters run rampant.

As an example, take a look at this news story about a change in the order of succession at the US Defense Department.

Just as the succession of the Vice President, and other officials in line behind him, to the Presidency is codified — so too, the matter of who within the Pentagon succeeds to the position of Secretary of Defense (or “Acting” Secretary of Defense, I suppose) in the event of a disaster is codified — with the line order explicitly specified several layers deep.

Why would that matter?

The heads of the military services (the Secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force) have been shifted lower down the totem pole in favor of three Undersecrataries of Defense — politically loyal advisers to the current Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. In terms of the new rules themselves and the press releases, it’s innocuously all just a matter of the job slots shifting in the order of succession — not the people.

The publicly stated rationale for the change, according to the news story, is:

“…the administration’s new emphasis on intelligence gathering versus combat in 21st century war fighting.”

Now, I don’t want to reject out of hand the possibility that I’m just slow, ignorant and not thinking clearly. After all, I’m an extremely busy guy who is often stressed out, short on sleep and way to overcaffeinated. Heck, sometimes I have to stop and think really hard just to be able to tie my shoelaces. No, really.

But despite all that, I’ve got to say that while the above quote is an example of official-sounding phrasing and successfully evokes the terrorism boogeyman, it just doesn’t seem to make much sense to me.

Carefully note that they’re changing a disaster plan here, folks. If some disaster - a natural disaster, a terrorist attack or even a Chinese nuke — wipes out the Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Secretary of Defense (a spot currently empty) at the same time, the number three man moves up automatically. That number three man used to be the Secretary of the Army, and has been since the coldest parts of the Cold War, if I recall correctly. It’s now, by recent executive order of the President, the Undersecretary for Inteligence, followed by the Undersecretary for Policy and the Undersecretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics in fourth and fifth places.

If a disaster wipes out the top two people in the Defense Department, and your current warfighting doctrine emphasizes intelligence over raw military force (due to the War on Terror being the primary concern) — then the last thing you would want to do is promote the head of intelligence and leave that function in disarray in the event of a disaster. Unless, of course, the decision-makers had bigger concerns…

The rest of what we are told as to why this is being done is the following:

“The changes were recommended, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, because the three undersecretaries have “a broad knowledge and perspective of overall Defense Department operations.” The service leaders are more focused on training, equipping and leading a particular military service, said Whitman.”

Hmmm. So if a disaster wipes out the top four people at the US Defense Department, the logical successor in such a time of crisis would be the Undersecretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (5th place) and not the Secretary of the Army (6th place)? I don’t buy that — not one damned bit.

To the AP’s credit, the story does heavily emphasize that this game of doomsday musical chairs just happens to move up in the hierarchy three close political allies of the current Secretary of Defense. In contrast to the lazy assertions that those who consider the possibility of a hidden agenda advocate a conspiracy theory, we’re being told in this case to uncritically accept a rather unlikely coincidence theory — that it’s just a coincidence that a policy review indicates that this would somehow be a wise choice and that the current holders of those three offices just happen to be neocon loyalists.

So what’s really going on? Hell if I know — but what it looks like ought to scare the shit out of you.

It looks like the President doesn’t trust the military. In particular, it looks like the President especially doesn’t trust the military in the event of a disaster wiping out several leading policy makers at the same time. I believe it indicates the President has potentially gone beyond being merely a little unbalanced and has slipped into the paranoia that Stalin and other dictators have suffered from. I hope I’m wrong.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 30th, 2005 at 6:55 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.