The Nuts & Bolts of the Declaration of Independence.

Drafting the Declaration

Drafting the wording

The Nuts and Bolts of the Declaration of Independence

The usual attention paid to the Declaration of Independence is upon the stirring words declaring tyranny of the King and for Independence.  These, however, are the specific charges listed, and from which the Constitution was carefully written to deal with these.  It is worth the effort to trace these charges to the provisions in the Constitution that were intended to preclude the same:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

If it had all failed, perhapos....

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

QUARTERING TROOPS IN HOMES

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

LEXINGTON

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

THE CONTINENTALS

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

THE HESSIANS

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

TORIES AND HESSIANS

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

RECRUITING INDIANS

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

YORKTOWN

Wanted: Military Industrial Complex

A military-industrial complex is necessary for a well arned and equipped miilitary force. Some one makes horseshoes, arrows, saddles, gunpowder, and fighter planes. Without industry, one has bo foraee for one's own rocks. Industry, left to it's own technological niche will produce something better than a Pentagib staff curcke, What has happened in the last four administrations is the civlianization and privatization of military combat, combat support, combat service support, and service support agenicies and operations.

The latest manual FM 5-0 abolishes there terms so as to render a century's worth of combat experience in logistics null, void, and unintelligible. This is the same gimmick used by Chariman Mao who had Chinese characters used in writing simpified with fewer srrokes and other abbreviations which renders the ancient texts of China unintelligible to modern Chinesse,

The Army Reserve was the repository of units trained in logistics and support at levels from Army and Corps. As OIF and OEF started, the Army Reserves were stripped down, combined, and reorganized into a logistic structure alien to American military history, but now afrer a decade of war, has gelled around a heirarchy of civil servants, contractors and a token military presence. While this may work at present, it will have no shelf life once shut down.

It takes about a decade for the rot to spread to catastrophic potential. The old fashioned notion that every Guard and Rsserve unit had to have a connecion to a real war plan or two left a basis for training in a focused manner. The civlian base that ususrrp Discom, Coscom, and TAACom units will leave those in battle without gas, ammo, food, and spare parts.

Funeral of Combat Service Support

Unplugging from the Muddle in the East may leave the Army unable to fight without heavy contractor support. Contractors, by and large, cost three times the cost of soldiers, The knowledge base of operational and strategic level logistics, formerly known as combat service support (CSS), is becoming lost to the uniformed, and will atrophy with the end of contracting for CSS in a post war cost cutting environment.

The Army Reserve was the home of combat service support units trained to support the contingencies of the Active, Guard, and Reserve fighting forces. The doctrine has virtually disappeared. The Army Reserve was home to CSS as there is little to do on full time active service to justify the expense. The Pentagon's visceral fear of Weekend Warriors has gutted the Army before, and it appears that national survival or defeat in battle in the future is a more acceptable outcome that restoring combat service support to those in uniform, and subject to military orders.

A solid nail in the coffin is the recent deletion of the term "combat service support"" from the lexicon of official Army terminology.

Full Time Amateurs vs Part Time Professionals

I believe there is a saying that amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals talk about logistics. The Army's decisions on force balance between components prior to Transformation put all the logistics in the Army Reserve with some rear area assets such as MP brigades in the Guard. If one accepts that, we had full time amateurs, and part time professionals.

I worked as the Intelligence Officer of a Combat Service Support Exercise Group of the 75th MAC (now 75th Division) which gave command post exercises to Corps support logistic units prior to Transformation. We gave exercises to such units as Petroleum Groups, Ammunition Groups, Support Commands, Area Support Commands, and Rear Area Operations Centers. We became the Army's expertise on logistics and rear area operations.

We wrote a manual to fill in the gap of doctrine on the subject of rear area operations, which manual was later published by CAC including the misspellings.

During the three years I was in the unit, I went on over fifty exercises (leave Friday afternoon, set up Friday night, start the war on Saturday morning, end on Sunday at noon, and fly home).

AS it was, the Materials Management Center (MMC) would determine who needed what supplies then the Movement Control Center (MCC) set up the convoys, and notified the MP's and the RAOC who was going where and when. In addition, the Engineers in the rear area, were largely responsible for maintenance of the lines of communication.

The RAOC (mostly National Guard) plugged into the Corps command network to assess the enemy threats in the area and recommend or actually control assets needed to preclude, prevent or protect the corps logistic structure.

The number and scope of major exercises I am personally familiar with included a Theatre medical exercise, a Theater MP exercise, several Coscom exercises, and a whole number of RAOC exercises, I wrote and managed the bad guy scenarios.

In the short time we had to test the decision making skills of the exercised command, it was necessary to either increase the demand for supplies, or cut the amount available. I used Soviet style airborne operations in blocking positions west of the Rhine to provide the work load necessary for staff coordination. I later found out from the Consul General of Germany in Houston that the drop zones I selected were the same the Soviets had selected but that my estimate of two divisions was low, as the Soviets intended to use ten airborne divisions to cross the Rhine.

What I read about the fact that convoys were sent willy nilly into Indian country fits with other sources which leave me aghast at the really stupid things done by Transformation. The damage is permanent, with a civilian control structure being crafted by the Pentagon including contractors and Civil Servants in the place of what we had trained to do since the end of WW 2.

Given a few years of no war, or low war, the necessary expertise to launch major operations will wither and die, along with God knows how many grunts.