The Intent of the Founders/Framers of the Constitution towards military dictatorship as experienced in the English Civil Wars and the early British military interference with colonial governance, placed its' trust in the "well regulated militia" of the states which could be brought to federal service.The first "regular" troops were guards at the stores at West Point. The combat record of those militia units up until the Mexican War was embarrassing with important exceptions. The Mexican War infused substantial combat experience that improved the military DNA of the nation.
The sophistication of both Confederate and Union troops in the Civil War was innovative and exemplary in terms of adaptive tactics, strategy, and equipment. This was allowed to rot until the Fubar called the Spanish American War after which the Dick Act of 1903 made state militias a part of the National Guard with provisions for integration into a rational national military establishment used successfully through Vietnam.
The default demobilization model of everyone go home was altered by the unexpected requirement of maintaining a large standing military force plus the demobilization of an expanded temporary standing force through a pre-planned purge originally set for 1962 revived for the 1972-74 purge of long serving temporary Guard and Reserve Officers. This was planned to return to the staid and stifling certitude of the old spit shined peace-time garrison force with predictable career patterns.
As it became obvious with the long exercised mobilization scenarios conducted in the Seventies,Eighties and Nineties, that an unacceptable dependence on Weekend Warriors had been allowed to fester which threatened the purity and essence of the precious permanent party by the addition of the other ninety percent of a field army's (or fleet, or wing) logistics were in the hands of the dreaded feather merchants. This threat to erection centric expeditionary rotation dynamics was promptly dealt with by a return to the mobilization model of the Indian Wars using contractors instead of the insidious uniform combat service support infection.
Of considerable concern to the problem of an unstable rotation resupply of families exacerbated by non standardization of drape allocation and the disconnect between the reassignment rota with that of semesterization of dependent schooling. Thus the obvious solution was the rotational activation of weekend warriors, originally cherry picked, to smooth out the drape and semesterization stabilization algorithm. Thus the home life of the Active component was stabilized at the expense of that of the Weekend Warrior's day job.
While the default caterwauling from the Russian Free BS Zones aka University Campus Academic Freedom Suppression Syndrome (aka Tenure) continues to predict an imminent coup by the Fascist Corporate Military Dictatorship. See latest update to authorized vilification terminology as no one remembers what a capitalist top hat looks like. In accordance with the Law of Inverse Attribution, that which is the most dire threat one blames others with is your own primary objective.
At present there appears to be the development of a two sided confrontation of coup centric political philosophies. The Left Out Left in it's anti-gun activism disarmed themselves. On the other hand, the New Left /Behind as predicted decades ago, is making a run for the arms room. The most popular prediction of this was in "It can't happen here" by Sinclair Lewis using Huey Long as a prototype coupster.
When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the
cross.”
In a similar vein, science fiction novelist Robert Heinlein published a series in 1939 called "Revolt in 2100" in which a Theocratic dictatorship maintains giant armored mobile center of government in the Great Plains.
- Take sex away from people. Make it forbidden, evil. Limit it to ritualistic
breeding. Force it to back up into suppressed sadism. Then hand the people a
scapegoat to hate. Let them kill a scapegoat occasionally for cathartic release.
The mechanism is ages old. Tyrants used it centuries before the word
"psychology" was ever invented. It works, too.
- Revolt in 2100 (1953)
- The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it
forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.
- Revolt in 2100 (1953), postscript
Those who fit these sixty year old profiles are yours to figure out if they exist or not.
Nevertheless the probability of a coup in the US has been increased by the existence of a large
standing Army which is an inherent risk with any large cohesive military force
regardless of the nature of civil government. "A standing army is
a standing threat to civil authority" This is without regard to any latent coup interest in the standing forces. Or for that matter without regard to any other variable other than the temptation that a loaded gun provides.
Hitler had his SA which got out of hand, so he cut a deal with the Wehrmacht and used the SS in the night of the long kniives to cut the SA down to ceremonial size. The German Wehrmacht, it can be the prize not the cause of the Hitler's Palace Coup. Stalin kept the Party, the Army, and the KGB and GRU in constant flux. Papa Doc Duvalier of Haiti disarmed his Army and used the TonTone Macoute (Boogeymen) urder and terrify the populace
To divide one's competitors and unite one's supporters is instinctive long locked into genetic code and applicable to family politics as well as global thermonuclear war. No conscious manipulation of symbols need occur in order to act on this basic defense strategy of self or kin or comrade. It is therefore likely that these dynamics have increased the vulnerability of the Republic to coup.
It may be that the White House and Congress
instinctively recognize a potential threat and moved to emasculate the
purely military elements of the miltary establishment by the creation of the Department of Defense which This then displaced the divide-unite imperative between the services from direct contact with the Congress and created DoD as the new entity to employ the divide-unite paradigm. Nevertheless the active components of
each of the services in differing degrees of angst operate to emasculate their
Reserve Components as a clear and present threat to career enhancement.
DoD then has the incentivizing capability to engender divisions within the services against each other as well as between components. The embodiment of the DoD emasculation strategy is the creation of the Senior Executive Service (SES). The playing field in the Pentagon is populated with different factions each with it's role in the drama of divide and conquer:
There are maybe five types of Pentegon personnel:
Those in uniform getting their ticket punched
Political appointees getting their ticket punched
Clerical staff defending the turf upon which salarries are born.
Senior Executive Service (SES) formerly "SuperGrades Gs15 up) aka Permanent Party
Think Tanks.Contractors.
The continued existence of the clerical staff is in covering fire from the SES; the SES uses the clerical staff as a Greek Phalanx. Ticket punchers learn which buttons get the right punch on the ticket to get the right next assignmet fron SES controlled assets.
Contractors and consultants are used as in civilian life, to load the scales in an internal sruggle for control by or of management staff.
That which I feel is dangerous to the state of the national defense is the insidious effect of the SES in suppression of the experience of the troops, particularly those of field grade. the manner in which the military approached GWOT/OIF, ETC is under sharp criticism by the most combat experienced of field soldiery over the inept management of this late altercation by the hand of the SES.
There are choices: Get rid of the SES or Break up the Pentagon so it can breath, although the current breakup in progress is the transfer of the national defense to the Department of Homeland Security. This is a wide open field as the Pentagon has left this work up to agencies now in DHS plus the National Guard.
This also explains why deployable combat units are being moved to CONUS so they can be more rapidly deployed OCONUS.
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