From the Washington Post:
The U.S. military has devised its first-ever war plans for guarding against and responding to terrorist attacks in the United States, envisioning 15 potential crisis scenarios and anticipating several simultaneous strikes around the country, according to officers who drafted the plans.
The classified plans, developed here at Northern Command headquarters, outline a variety of possible roles for quick-reaction forces estimated at as many as 3,000 ground troops per attack, a number that could easily grow depending on the extent of the damage and the abilities of civilian response teams.
The possible scenarios range from “low end,” relatively modest crowd-control missions to “high-end,” full-scale disaster management after catastrophic attacks such as the release of a deadly biological agent or the explosion of a radiological device, several officers said.
Some of the worst-case scenarios involve three attacks at the same time, in keeping with a Pentagon directive earlier this year ordering Northcom, as the command is called, to plan for multiple simultaneous attacks.
The war plans represent a historic shift for the Pentagon, which has been reluctant to become involved in domestic operations and is legally constrained from engaging in law enforcement. Indeed, defense officials continue to stress that they intend for the troops to play largely a supporting role in homeland emergencies, bolstering police, firefighters and other civilian response groups.
But the new plans provide for what several senior officers acknowledged is the likelihood that the military will have to take charge in some situations, especially when dealing with mass-casualty attacks that could quickly overwhelm civilian resources.
Personally, I’m heartened to know that in the event of some domestic emergency, the military is prepared to act—and has drawn up plans in advance of the inevitable pushback from civil libertarians, who are sure to find some reason to protest this contingency.
But so long as they play a supporting role—or are authorized to step in where domestic law enforcement is powerless or critically overextended—I’m not any more concerned with a potential military abuse of power as I would be if a local militia cobbled together out of armed citizens took control in the wake of some catastrophe.
****
(h/t John Cole, who agrees, if even some of his commenters are less than sanguine)
I guess I have the obvious libertarian objections that you mentioned. But I suppose as long as the lines are clearly defined in the role of support, it would be a benefit. Part of my overactive imagination still sees the potential though. Hopefully, we won’t have to use it.
I’m pretty libertarian, but I have a hard time seeing that there would be anymore potential for abuse than there is now when the National Guard responds to an emergency.
I agree that it is good that someone is thinking about this stuff. In general, I think that it is a good idea for the military to do a bunch of what-if planning. I presume that the vast majority of what-ifs wouldn’t come to pass, but the exercise would keep the military from becoming too focused on the things they know. A bunch of psychotics in a military back room thinking about all the ways that someone could attack us would be a Good Thing.
How can we be worried
when we have smiley faces 
to play with on JG’s blog 
? So long as they don’t shut down first amendment rights (Sen. McCain 
), we can play long after curfew – unless they shut off the electricity, in which case we will have to e-mail in the dark 
.
Thanks for the toys, Mr. G!
HCT
Smiley bits
Bold bits
Italic bits
[ul]Underlined bits[/ul]
Evun a spell chekker!
[ul]Weeeeeeeeee!!![/ul]
I’m opposed on libertarian grounds, but ask me again when I’m being crushed under 7 stories of my Wall Street office building, okay?
FYI
Seems the underline tag bit needs repair.
The cancel button on the spell checker doesn’t cancel. It looks up “null” instead.
Nuts. I was hoping to be part of a quite abusive National Guard Junta…and I have been telling all my enemies – “just you wait, you’ll be first with your back against the wall…”
I guess I’ll have to go back to the 1993 Mississippi Flood model. *sigh* All I got to do then, was help people 16 hours a day.
The correct code for underlining is [ u ], not [ ul ].
See?
Ok, these are going to be fun. {cartwheel}
McGehee,
Your link doesn’t work. The one that’s supposed to be going to “See?”
Speaking of attacks on America, Ali over at A Free Iraqi hypothesizes that the latest threats from al-Qaeda conciously did not call for bombings inside America. This, says Ali, is because AQ is afraid that Bush will drop a bag of hammers on their enablers, every one, from Fez to Kuala Lumpur.
Yeah, I’ve been saying that for quite some time—that for all our feel-good multiculturalism, the US polity won’t stand for a series of terrorist bombings inside this country. And for all the talk about paper tigers and whatnot, we’re the country who dropped two nukes, firebombed Dresden, and tore down Atlanta.
Fez? The kid from That 70’s Show?
And here I thought Ashton Kutcher was the true evil associated with that program. Silly me.