Probably not. But there sure seems to be a lot of chit-chat about the possibility.
I noted late last year that retired Gen. Tommy Franks, who led our troops into Iraq, was speculating that a really big terrorist attack – a "dirty" bomb or the like – might cause "our population to question our own Constitution and begin to militarize our country."
Then, while browsing Billmon's blog earlier this month, I encountered his pointer to a BuzzFlash piece that he called the "scariest thing I've read in a good long while." And he's right – it is scary if you're inclined to believe in conspiracy theories. I'm not so inclined … at least most of the time.
But here are a couple of paragraphs from the long, and link-filled BuzzFlash piece, which you should take the time to read yourself:
"In an article entitled, 'When the War Hits Home: U.S. Plans for Martial Law, Tele-Governance and the Suspension of Elections,' [Wayne] Madsen and [John] Stanton delved into the more frightening aspects of what might be in store. 'One incident, one aircraft hijacked, a "dirty nuke" set off in a small town, may well prompt the Bush regime, let's say during the election campaign of 2003-2004, to suspend national elections for a year while his government ensures stability,' they wrote. 'Many closed door meetings have been held on these subjects and the notices for these meetings have been closely monitored by the definitive www.cryptome.org.'
"To make matters worse, if martial law is imposed, Air Force General Ralph E. Eberhart will be able to blast through Posse Comitatus and deploy troops to America’s streets. Gen. Eberhart, you might recall, is the former Commander of NORAD, which was in charge of protecting America’s skies on Sept. 11. But instead of being scrutinized for NORAD’s massive failures, he was promoted and now heads the Pentagon's Northern Command. And, as military analyst William M. Arkin explained, 'It is only in the case of "extraordinary" domestic operations that would enable Gen. Eberhart to bring in 'intelligence collectors, special operators and even full combat troops' to bear. What kind of situation would have to occur to grant Eberhart 'the far-reaching authority that goes with 'extraordinary operations’? Nothing. He already has that authority.' [Los Angeles Times]
"Which brings us to the inevitable (and most important) question. How primed is the American public to accept suspended elections, martial law, or whatever else the White House decides to 'market'?"
Yeah, it's somewhat overwrought. After all, it's about a conspiracy, or rather the suspicion of one. But …
I also ran across a creepy piece in Atlantic Monthly, an excerpt from former L.A. Times Reporter Jim Mann on Bush's war Cabinet. Titled, "The Armageddon Plan," it details a highly classified "shadow government" plan developed by the Reagan administration in which Dick Cheney, now vice president, and Donald Rumsfeld, now secretary of defense, planned for "government continuity" in case of a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. Here's Mann:
"After leaving their day jobs Cheney and Rumsfeld usually made their way to Andrews Air Force Base, outside Washington. From there, in the middle of the night, each man—joined by a team of forty to sixty federal officials and one member of Ronald Reagan's Cabinet—slipped away to some remote location in the United States, such as a disused military base or an underground bunker. A convoy of lead-lined trucks carrying sophisticated communications equipment and other gear would head to each of the locations.
"Rumsfeld and Cheney were principal actors in one of the most highly classified programs of the Reagan Administration. Under it U.S. officials furtively carried out detailed planning exercises for keeping the federal government running during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The program called for setting aside the legal rules for presidential succession in some circumstances, in favor of a secret procedure for putting in place a new "President" and his staff. The idea was to concentrate on speed, to preserve "continuity of government," and to avoid cumbersome procedures; the speaker of the House, the president pro tempore of the Senate, and the rest of Congress would play a greatly diminished role."
This might seem like ancient history, except that, " … The program is of particular interest today because it helps to explain the thinking and behavior of the second Bush Administration in the hours, days, and months after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Vice President Cheney urged President Bush to stay out of Washington for the rest of that day; Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld ordered his deputy Paul Wolfowitz to get out of town; Cheney himself began to move from Washington to a series of "undisclosed locations"; and other federal officials were later sent to work outside the capital, to ensure the continuity of government in case of further attacks. All these actions had their roots in the Reagan Administration's clandestine planning exercises."
Clearly, it is the duty of any government to have contingency plans for a wide variety of worst-case situations, and in recent history this country has never faced anything as potentially devastating as a nuclear attack would have been. But the Soviets are now occupying that "dustbin of history" they promised to relegate us to. Thus, Mann notes, ” After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet collapse, the rationale for the exercises changed. A Soviet nuclear attack was obviously no longer plausible—but what if terrorists carrying nuclear weapons attacked the United States and killed the President and the Vice President?" The Clinton administration found such an eventuality unlikely and eventually shelved the program.
"There things stood until September 11, 2001, when Cheney and Rumsfeld suddenly began to act out parts of a script they had rehearsed years before," Mann writes. "Operating from the underground shelter beneath the White House, called the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, Cheney told Bush to delay a planned flight back from Florida to Washington. At the Pentagon, Rumsfeld instructed a reluctant Wolfowitz to get out of town to the safety of one of the underground bunkers, which had been built to survive nuclear attack. Cheney also ordered House Speaker Dennis Hastert, other congressional leaders, and several Cabinet members (including Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and Interior Secretary Gale Norton) evacuated to one of these secure facilities away from the capital. Explaining these actions a few days later, Cheney vaguely told NBC's Tim Russert, 'We did a lot of planning during the Cold War with respect to the possibility of a nuclear incident.' He did not mention the Reagan Administration program or the secret drills in which he and Rumsfeld had regularly practiced running the country.
"Their participation in the extra-constitutional continuity-of-government exercises, remarkable in its own right, also demonstrates a broad, underlying truth about these two men. For three decades, from the Ford Administration onward, even when they were out of the executive branch of government, they were never far away. They stayed in touch with defense, military, and intelligence officials, who regularly called upon them. They were, in a sense, a part of the permanent hidden national-security apparatus of the United States—inhabitants of a world in which Presidents come and go, but America keeps on fighting."
Then, I open today's paper and see what Condoleezza Rice and Tom Ridge are saying about the likelihood of terror attacks inside the U.S. before Election Day:
"Al-Qaida's new game plan, officials said, is to show its clout by disrupting the U.S. elections in November or one of the other large events scheduled in coming months."
Well, such attacks may, indeed occur. And based on what we saw 9/11, they could be bloody. But absolutely the worst thing we could do in the face of such a threat is postpone a presidential and congressional election.
Here's some of what Abraham Lincoln had to say about the presidential election of 1864, held during the Civil War:
"We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us. … the election, along with its incidental, and undesirable strife, has done good too. It has demonstrated that a people's government can sustain a national election, in the midst of a great civil war. Until now it has not been known to the world that this was a possibility."
The Civil War was by far the most devastating and destabilizing event this nation has faced. Nothing al-Qaida could do could even begin to rival it. So let's pay attention to what old Abe had to say. We don't need to postpone elections. We need to make sure we conduct them. No matter what.
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