Decius wrote:
There is a totally different tone that you take with domestic catastrophies versus enemies in war, even when people are rioting or shooting at rescue teams, and it is appropriate to have a rapid response capability that is properly trained to handle domestic threats.

Yesterday I listened to a talk on this subject by Robert D. Kaplan, a long-time military/international affairs writer for the Atlantic Monthly and author of ten books, including the just-released "Imperial Grunts". Kaplan says that you can't readily separate the humanitarian job from the combat job. To a large extent, he says, training and experience for the combat task makes the teams much better performers for the humanitarian task. And if you were to muster or draft a separate agency/department of first responders, using, say, the Marines, as a source of trained personnel, you would find that the Marines' high morale would fall off rapidly and dramatically after being assigned to the humanitarian-only role.

In his talk, Kaplan actually directly contradicts your argument above, based on first-hand experience embedded with the Army and Marines in Iraq, Afghanistan, and doing tsunamai relief.

Decius wrote:

The Secretary "is reviewing a wide range of possible changes in the way the
military could be used in domestic emergencies," Di Rita said Friday.
He said these included "possible changes in the relationship between
federal and state military authorities." Di Rita called the Posse
Comitatus Act "very archaic," and stated that it limited the Pentagon's
flexibility in responding.

I was thinking about this as I watched events unfold in New Orleans. I wanted the military to respond, but in the back of my mind I was concerned about the legal implications of that. I think the right way to handle this is to have federal first responders with security capability, perhaps organized by FEMA. There is a totally different tone that you take with domestic catastrophies versus enemies in war, even when people are rioting or shooting at rescue teams, and it is appropriate to have a rapid response capability that is properly trained to handle domestic threats.

Furthermore, Posse Comitatus is founded on solid philisophical principals that prevent the state from finding itself in a position where it is waging war on its own citizens. There is no reason emergency congressional authorization could not be obtained for the use of military force domestically if required. If Congress can't pass bills fast enough I can build a computer system that will fix that problem.

Worrying about the legal implications in a disaster is pretty sad.
FEMA should have requested military assistance and noone should have been worrying abuot legal issues.

I guess what Bush is doing is right then, cause if people are worrying about legal issues - then we just neeed to make using the military legal and those issues go away eh?

I guess what Bush is doing is right then, cause if people are worrying about legal issues - then we just neeed to make using the military legal and those issues go away eh?

Why not just do away with the Constutition all together?!

Decius wrote:

I guess what Bush is doing is right then, cause if people are worrying about legal issues - then we just neeed to make using the military legal and those issues go away eh?

Why not just do away with the Constutition all together?!

No, just need to modify it to allow for the real hero's to take action without fear of being sued.

ibenez wrote:
Worrying about the legal implications in a disaster is pretty sad.
FEMA should have requested military assistance and noone should have been worrying abuot legal issues.

Well, for the part of the country that isn't coping directly, which is most of us, there's nothing wrong with addressing issues that ought to be addressed. If my mom dies, i still have to pay my bills and go to work. However, I agree with you in the sense that getting extra personnel on the ground (or water, alas) immediately should have been easier. I think we do need to be careful about how any such provision for use of active federal military in an emergency is written however. If you aren't careful, you end up permitting the federal government to step in and quell political demonstrations if they turn into an "emergency" and open up a lot of potential for misuse of federal power. We don't like that here in America, or anyway, we used to not like it.

I guess what Bush is doing is right then, cause if people are worrying about legal issues - then we just neeed to make using the military legal and those issues go away eh?

In the sense that law is a reflection of society's morality, perhaps that's so. It may be that the people want the federal government to have broader powers to respond to emergency situations. I may even agree, with the above caveat that we need to be real careful about how any such law is structured.

That all being said, I'm interested to know what caused the delay in the first place... was it congress or the oval office? Who was waiting? The truth is, it's a compelling argument for expansion of federal power, which sets off my normally quiescent libertarianism alarm. That ultra paranoid voice wonders if the administration might have seen an opportunity here to a) discredit the processes in place for limiting executive power and b) open the door for discussions of expanding the emergency powers available to the president. I hate to be so cynical, but politics has made me that way, at least in part.

Decius wrote:

The Secretary "is reviewing a wide range of possible changes in the way the
military could be used in domestic emergencies," Di Rita said Friday.
He said these included "possible changes in the relationship between
federal and state military authorities." Di Rita called the Posse
Comitatus Act "very archaic," and stated that it limited the Pentagon's
flexibility in responding.

I was thinking about this as I watched events unfold in New Orleans. I wanted the military to respond, but in the back of my mind I was concerned about the legal implications of that. I think the right way to handle this is to have federal first responders with security capability, perhaps organized by FEMA. There is a totally different tone that you take with domestic catastrophies versus enemies in war, even when people are rioting or shooting at rescue teams, and it is appropriate to have a rapid response capability that is properly trained to handle domestic threats.

It's a sticky discussion, true. Based on my reading, is seems like the military units in NO, both Guard and active duty, were, on the average, both more useful and more pleasant to deal with than the local authorities. I almost hate to say it, but if my options in an emergency are a local cop with a superiority complex or a squad of soldiers with M16's, I'll take the latter. Still the implications are somewhat disturbing.