Posse Comitatus?

“The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed on June 16, 1878 after the end of Reconstruction. The Act prohibits most members of the federal uniformed services (the Army, Air Force, and State National Guard forces when such are called into federal service) from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain “law and order” on non-federal property (states and their counties and municipal divisions) in the former Confederate states.

The statute generally prohibits federal military personnel and units of the National Guard under federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The Coast Guard is exempt from the Act.”

The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.

The long-planned shift in the Defense Department’s role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.

There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military’s role in domestic law enforcement.

But the Bush administration and some in Congress have pushed for a heightened homeland military role since the middle of this decade, saying the greatest domestic threat is terrorists exploiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Foreign and domestic, I guess. Bad idea, in my humble.

Not saying the military shouldn’t pitch in when things go awry: natural disasters, consequence management, Daily Kos konventions (just kidding). Just never much cottoned to the notion of US citizens seeing US soldiers standing on US street corners in an official capacity, armed or otherwise, waiting for something to happen. As though the militarization of our constabulary wasn’t enough. As though we didn’t have enough to do.

I’ve seen it in other countries, soldiers with assault rifles, and people wondering who those rifles were meant for. Never much liked it there either. But then I told myself to be calm, told myself to just remember: This isn’t America.