Despite the admonition of our founders about the threat of standing armies, the government is now conducting high-profile military “training exercises” around the country. The latest “training in an urban environment” is occurring in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
It makes perfect sense the Special Operations Command is running the show. It conducts covert and clandestine missions, including psychological warfare ops. The idea is to keep the manufactured war on terror front and center and acclimate civilians to the presence of troops perpetually in their midst. Black Hawk helicopters swooping over downtown skyscrapers and mock battles on waterfronts are now spectator events.
“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty,” James Madison warned the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
“Americans of the 18th century took a much dimmer view of the institution of a professional army,” writes historian Christopher Hamner. “A near-universal assumption of the founding generation was the danger posed by a standing military force. Far from being composed of honorable citizens dutifully serving the interests of the nation, armies were held to be ‘nurseries of vice,’ ‘dangerous,’ and ‘the grand engine of despotism.’”
Now Americans fawn over raw military power and consider war and destruction as entertainment. Instead of abhorring invasions of defenseless countries such as Iraq, unprovoked attacks and mass murder are celebrated with triumphant parades, yellow ribbons around old oak trees, self-righteously declarative bumper-stickers and other disgusting public displays. “Support our troops” has become the mindless mantra of frogs slowly boiling in the water of tyranny.