Sept. 20, 2005 – Responding to heavy criticism over his administration’s failure to handle the disaster created by Hurricane Katrina, President George W. Bush is floating the idea of repealing a 127-year-old law restricting federally-controlled troops from conducting operations on United States soil.
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In his address to the nation last Thursday, Bush said: "It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces -- the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice."
A large number of regular military forces have been deployed to areas stricken by Hurricane Katrina. Pentagon spokesperson Lawrence Di Rita told the Associated Press that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is reviewing possible revisions to the law that currently bars military forces from taking part in law enforcement activities like traffic stops, searches, seizures and arrests.
The recent proposal to undo the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act has yet to gain much vocal or organized opposition, but signals that such a move has been in the offing have existed for years. In the pre-September 11 era, the American Civil Liberties Union warned that allowing active military operations on US soil could seriously curtail personal freedoms.
In 1999, Congress considered legislation to broaden exemptions to the Act. Though the bill failed, the terrorist attacks two years later reopened the issue when Congress began crafting the legislation to create the Homeland Security Department.
The Pentagon created the Northern Command in 2002 to oversee domestic military deployment in the event of a terror attack or other calamity. In a statement the same year, and again in testimony to the 9/11 Commission in 2004, the ACLU warned that the creeping militarization of domestic law enforcement could easily culminate in disastrous -- and potentially deadly -- results.
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At hearings last Thursday, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano testified that repealing large portions of the act would improve disaster response and could help troops train for "tasks directly related to its primary war-fighting jobs – such as theater support to civilian governments during a conflict, counterinsurgency missions, and postwar occupation – as well as homeland security."
