Our Military: Obama's Janissaries?

Last May, reading a British Daily Mail article about the umbrella incident, during which two U.S. Marines were ordered to hold umbrellas over the heads of President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a press conference in the White House Rose Garden, other than expressing my disgust for the degrading chore the Marines had to perform (against protocol), something else tickled my memory. At the time, I was engaged in other issues and that little gray gremlin never came out of the closet. Specifically, it was the picture of Erdogan, a policy pal of Obama's, flapping his gums while a Rock of Gibraltar Marine stood stoically holding an umbrella over his head, which prompted the gremlin to make his presence known.

At the time, I couldn't make the connection between Erdogan and that elusive something.

This morning, after having imbibed over the past year a number of stories of how Obama goes out of his way to emasculate the U.S. military or turn it into his personal policy enforcer (Libya, Syria, etc.), the gremlin emerged, garbed in a tall funny hat with plumes and long robes and brandishing a wicked-looking scimitar, and greeting me in Turkish – Uyan, yavaş zekâlı biri! – and in Bosnian – Probudi se, tupoglav jedan!*

Janissaries.

Who or what were the Janissaries? They were a private army of Turkish sultans recruited from prisoners of war, chiefly from the Balkans. A Harvard Center for Middle East Studies study document describes this special military arm of the Ottomans:

The Janissary Corps, yeniceri ocak or "new soldier corps," was one of two main branches of the Ottoman armed forces, the other being the Sipahis or provincial free-born Muslim cavalrymen, organized in the fourteenth century. The Janissaries were the kapukulu, "slaves of the sultan." The corps members were educated and trained for the Ottoman military and government service and became the private standing army of the Ottoman Sultan. The Janissaries became an efficient and formidable fighting force and the most outstanding army in Europe. Over time the Corps' essence and behavior and the empire's needs changed and the corps was abolished in 1826.

The Janissaries were recruited from captured Christian adolescent boys who were made to convert to Islam. They were a key element in the final capitulation of Constantinople in 1453.

Were it not for Obama's blatantly pro-Islam policies and stance over the last five years, the notion that he regarded our military forces as Janissarian tools would never have occurred to me. It didn't occur to me under George W. Bush, even though he parroted the Islamic line that Islam is a "religion of peace," nor even under Bill Clinton, in spite of his Bosnian intervention in favor of Muslims.

From his "New Beginning" speech at Cairo University in June 2009 through his Libyan intervention of 2011 to the staffing of key federal government posts with Muslims that rivals the Soviet infiltration of the government from the 1930s on through the collapse of the Soviet Union, one cannot help but think that, consequently, our U.S. military, supposedly dedicated to defending this country and the Constitution, has become a toy of Obama's  ambitions. There is, of course, his friendship with the Muslim Brotherhood and his sending Marines to Saudi Arabia to train Syrian "rebels" or "insurgents" (aka jihadists) fighting in the civil war. There is the ongoing indoctrination of American military personnel – as the Balkan adolescents were – on the "beneficent" nature of Islam. Let us not forget his 2012 order to the FBI to excise all references to Islam and Muslims from the agency's training materials, and his "open immigration" policy that allows tens of thousands of Muslims to settle in this country. The instances are legion.

So, the question is: If it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, and looks like a duck, is it a duck?

That is: If, aside from his hateful moves against the military, Obama regards it as his personal palace guard ready to do his bidding, can it be said that he is treating our military as a instrument of his own personal foreign policy? Given the pro-Islam character of that foreign policy, are there not grounds for suspecting or thinking that?

This is a theme, not a charge. An analogy, not an accusation. But all the ingredients are there, and they comport with Obama's character and agenda, an agenda that is overtly pro-Islamic, proto-totalitarian, and designed to ally this country with its ideological enemies.

If we can characterize our military as a pliable force of Janissaries, why not our intelligence agencies, and law enforcement entities, as well, from the FBI on down to the local police? In Britain, local police forces act as arms of the Home Office and its policies vis-à-vis government speech codes and immigration.

For example, in 2012, the Guardian reported on the constraints on freedom of speech in Britain, citing the Public Order Act of 1986:

Section 5 of the 1986 Public Order Act says a person "is guilty of an offence if he (a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or (b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby".

There are two things wrong with this catch-all wording. First, unlike section 4 of the same act, and Britain's legislation on incitement to hatred on grounds of religion or sexual orientation, it does not require evidence of an intention to cause harassment, alarm or distress. The standard is just "likely to". Who decides what is "likely to" be caused harassment, alarm or distress? On the street, the police do.

This would account for British newspapers refusing to refer to Muslim murders, gang terrorism, rapes, and the like, but adopting instead the euphemism "Asian." It also accounts for the victims of Musim crime being harassed by the government and by Muslims, such as the woman who confronted Lee Rigby's killers in May of this year.

Is such a law possible here in the U.S.? Yes, if the Department of Homeland Security has any say in the matter. The DHS, governed for years by retired Janet Napolitano, regards itself as sacrosanct and above the law, although some journalists have attempted to uncover the corruption and waste endemic in the agency. Recently, The Daily Caller reported that a journalist's home was raided in the wee hours of the morning by federal agents, ostensively looking for guns, but actually after the journalist's notes about corruption in the Air Marshall program.

An investigative reporter in the Washington, D.C., area says armed federal agents stormed her home in August and confiscated stacks of confidential documents, leading her to fear that her undercover government sources have been exposed.

Audrey Hudson, a freelance reporter for Newsmax and the Colorado Observer, said the Department of Homeland Security and the Maryland State Police raided her home in Shady Side, Md., in August….

But Hudson told the Daily Caller that agents also confiscated documents containing information on sources within the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration. She said no subpoena was presented for the documents and said the confiscation was outside the bounds of the warrant.

She said about seven officers dressed in full body armor arrived at her home at 4:30 a.m. Aug. 6 and presented her with a search warrant. Hudson said an investigator with the Coast Guard’s Investigative Service identified her as the reporter responsible for writing a series of articles critical of air marshals for The Washington Times newspaper.

Is this the wave of the future? Pre-dawn raids on journalists, or even on bloggers like me? An administration that would side with totalitarian Islam would have no qualms about establishing a police state in this country. It would be imposed under the rubric of "law and order," or "public safety." It wouldn't be fair to charge the Democrats exclusively with that predilection. Most Republicans are just as capable of wanting to set our minds right with a law and a billy club and a "night in the box."

As part of the indoctrination of our military about how Islam is a "religion of peace," and how to behave in the presence of Muslims, the Army has been calling Christian groups, as well as the Tea Party, "extremists" capable of terrorism, and warned that any soldier discovered contributing to any of those groups would be punished according the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The most bizarre instance of the military's brainwashing of its ranks was its deeming the Founders as "extremists." Infowars reported on August 24^th in its article, DoD Training Manual: ‘Extremist’ Founding Fathers ‘Would Not Be Welcome In Today’s Military’:

Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch recently obtained a Department of Defense training manual which lists people who embrace “individual liberties” and honor “states’ rights,” among other characteristics, as potential “extremists” who are likely to be members of “hate groups.”

Freedom as an "extremist ideology"? Does anyone still remember Napolitano's 2009 internal memo about the dangers posed by "right-wing extremists"? As the Washington Times reported then:

The Department of Homeland Security is warning law enforcement officials about a rise in “rightwing extremist activity,” saying the economic recession, the election of America's first black president and the return of a few disgruntled war veterans could swell the ranks of white-power militias. A footnote attached to the report by the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines “rightwing extremism in the United States” as including not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.

“It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration,” the warning says….

The nine-page document was sent to police and sheriff's departments across the United States on April 7 under the headline, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.”

It says the federal government “will be working with its state and local partners over the next several months” to gather information on “rightwing extremist activity in the United States.”

Finally, suppose things reached a point under Obama that the government sensed there was an uprising afoot against his policies, or at least mass civil disobedience vis-à-vis ObamaCare or illegal immigration? The Small Wars Journal in July 2012 published a paper, by Kevin Benson and Jennifer Weber, "Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A 'Vision' of the Future." The authors project a Tea Party-aligned group seceding from the Union by taking over a South Carolina town, and how the federal government would deal with it. It discusses in detail how to quell a rebellion against "big government."

In this paper, we posit a scenario in which a group of political reactionaries take over a strategically positioned town and have the tacit support of not only local law enforcement but also state government officials, right up to the governor.  Under present law, which initially stemmed from bad feelings about Reconstruction, the military’s domestic role is highly circumscribed.  In the situation we lay out below, even though the governor refuses to seek federal help to quell the uprising (the usual channel for military assistance), the Constitution allows the president broad leeway in times of insurrection.  Citing the precedents of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and Dwight D. Eisenhower sending troops to Little Rock in 1957, the president mobilizes the military and the Department of Homeland Security, to regain control of the city.  This scenario requires us to consider how domestic intelligence is gathered and shared, the role of local law enforcement (to the extent that it supports the operation), the scope and limits of the Insurrection Act--for example maintaining a military chain of command but in support of the Attorney General as the Department of Justice is the Lead Federal Agency (LFA) under the conditions of the Act--and the roles of the local, national, and international media….

The design of this plan to restore the rule of law to Darlington will include information/influence operations designed to present a picture of the federal response and the inevitable defeat of the insurrection. 

Forbes Magazine's Michael Peck, in his November 15^th, 2012 article, "How the U.S. Military Would Crush a Tea Party Rebellion," notes:

Curiously, the authors don’t really delve the fundamental issue of American soldiers firing on American civilians, except to note that troops would have to comply with standing rules on force, which require graduated levels of violence. Civil support in South Carolina makes counterinsurgency in Kabul look like a picnic.

The old gun lobby line that a pack of civilians with hunting rifles will stop a tyrannical federal government is silly. This isn’t 1776, the U.S. military is a tad better equipped than King George’s redcoats, and if the U.S. Army decides to crush an insurrection, it will do so.

However, the real question is this: under what circumstances should federal troops conduct military operations against American citizens on American soil? Is this scenario likely enough that the U.S. military prepare for such operations, or should we worry that preparation will inevitably lead to action?

And there we are. Have the rank-and-file of our military been so thoroughly brainwashed by politically correctness and fear-mongering propaganda that they would act as American Janissaries against their fellow citizens? Most of the officer corps, regardless of the service, has already been suborned and co-opted. Americans face a dark future if our military no longer exists to defend our freedoms, but to quash them.

A police state established to "protect our liberties" is an ideological non sequitur and an ideational obscenity.

America has three more years of Obama. Anything can happen between now and 2016.

 *Translation: Wake up, slow-witted one!