Operation Jade Helm and Texas “Paranoia”
By Jacob G. Hornberger
July 18, 2015 "Information
Clearing House"
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"FFF"
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Mainstream statists are yucking it up over the
so-called paranoia of Texas citizens who are concerned about the
U.S. military’s giant training exercise in the Southwest called
Operation Jade Helm. “Yuck, yuck,” the statists are exclaiming.
“Those paranoid Texans!”The statist idea,
of course, is that the military is our friend — our protector — our
god. The military establishment (and the CIA and NSA) keep us safe
and secure from the terrorists, the communists, the drug dealers,
the illegal aliens, and other scary creatures. Without the military,
we’d be speaking German, Russian, terrorist, Korean, Vietnamese, or
communist. The military would never do anything bad to the American
people.
Well, you’d have an awfully hard time convincing
Americans of Japanese, German, and Italian descent of that. Think
back to World War II, when the U.S. military, dutifully following
orders, rounded up not only Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants
but also American citizens of Japanese, German, and Italian descent
and placed them in well-guarded concentration camps.
Yes, I said both immigrants and citizens.
Immigrants — people who had left their country of origin to come to
America. Nonetheless, they were treated as criminals for having come
from a country with whom the United States was now at war.
And just think: American citizens. Jailed for
years in concentration camps, having committed no crime whatsoever
either.
The discomforting fact is that the U.S. military’s
round-up and incarceration of thousands of innocent people in
concentration camps here in the United States was no different in
principle from the round-ups and incarcerations of millions of
innocent people in Europe by the Nazis.
Isn’t that ironic? They tell us that the “good
war” was about fighting for freedom. Really? You’d have a hard time
convincing the innocent Japanese Americans, German-Americans, and
Italian-Americans, and the people who immigrated here, who were
incarcerated in U.S. concentration camps of that.
There is more irony. Many of the Japanese
immigrants who were incarcerated had children who were U.S. citizens
fighting in the U.S. Armed Forces. At least U.S. officials permitted
them to visit with their parents in the U.S. concentration camps
when on leave from military duty.
Even more irony. Although many of the children of
immigrants were U.S. citizens, they were also forced to remain
incarcerated too.
A fascinating book, published this year, about one
particular U.S. concentration camp, is
The Train to Crystal City: FDR’s Secret Prison Exchange Program and
America’s Only Family Internment Camp During World War II,
which follows the lives of particular families who were incarcerated
there. It is a story of tragedy and horror, especially for families
who were traded for American prisoners in Japan and Germany.
Yes, I said “traded.” What U.S. officials would
say to concentration camp prisoners is this: We will let your wife
and children come stay with you in this concentration camp if you
will agree to let us repatriate you to Germany or Japan. Many of the
prisoners, not surprisingly, took the deal, especially since the
wives were having a terribly difficult time raising their small
children alone.
U.S. officials would use these particular families
as trade bait, offering to trade them for an equal number of
American prisoners over there. Imagine the horror of these families
— especially the U.S. born children who could not speak the language
well — when they arrived in war-devastated Germany or Japan near the
end of the war, where people were struggling just to survive.
To enlarge their pool of trade bait, U.S.
officials even orchestrated the foreign kidnapping of German and
Japanese immigrants in Latin America and their rendition to the
United States.
Could it happen it again? Of course, and it’s a
virtual certainty that it would. For one thing, in one of its most
shameful and cowardly acts, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the
Nazi-like incarceration of all these innocent people, and that
decision has never been overturned. It is still the law of the land.
In the midst of a real war, what are the chances
that the Supreme Court is going to stand up the Pentagon and the
CIA? Nil. After all, if they wouldn’t stand up to them with respect
to things like torture, undeclared wars, secret surveillance
schemes, and other programs that are inherent to totalitarian
regimes during the U.S. government’s much-vaunted “war on
terrorism,” there is no reasonable possibility they would stand up
to them on concentration camps, round-ups, and incarcerations in the
midst of a real war.
Of course, statists would say, “Jacob, that was a
long time ago. Our military would never do that again.”
Really? How about what happened in Chile in 1973?
The Pentagon and the CIA worked together to bring into existence one
of the most brutal military dictatorships in history, one in which
the military conducted a real-life Jade Helm operation, by sweeping
across the country, rounding up their own citizens, incarcerating
them in concentration camps, torturing and raping them, and even
executing them.
And all the victims were all innocent — as
innocent as Hitler’s victims were. Their only “crime”: believing in
socialism or communism.
“But Jacob, that wasn’t our military that
conducted that real-life Jade Helm operation. That was the Chilean
military,” statists would exclaim.
Except for the fact that the U.S. military brought
about the coup in Chile, knowing full well what military
dictatorships do to establish “order and stability.” Equally
important, the Pentagon, the CIA, the president, and the entire
national-security establishment were ecstatic over what Gen.
Pinochet and his goons were doing to rid Chile of everyone who
believed in communism and socialism. Moreover, U.S. officials
immediately began flooding Pinochet’s tyrannical apparatus with U.S.
taxpayer money in order to help him accomplish what he was doing.
In fact, the U.S. national-security establishment
even used Pinochet’s brutal military apparatus to murder two
innocent American men, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi. Not
surprisingly, those two murders have never been investigated or
prosecuted by the Justice Department or Congress — no doubt because
to do so would cross a red line established by the Pentagon and the
CIA.
Still too long ago?
Well, how about Egypt today? Round-ups,
incarcerations, torture, kangaroo tribunals, suppression of dissent,
and executions at the hands of a military dictatorship that is no
different in principle from the Pinochet dictatorship. And it’s all
being done with the support and approval of U.S. officials,
including the Pentagon and the CIA, who continue to refortify the
dictatorship with weaponry, bullets, tanks, planes, equipment, and
money.
America’s Founding Fathers had it right and
American statists have it wrong with respect to the
dangers of standing armies. As history has proved time and
again, the biggest threat to the freedom and well-being of a
citizenry lies with standing armies.
Texans are wise to be concerned about Operation
Jade Helm. Any people who value a free society would be concerned
about such an exercise, not to mention the existence of the gigantic
military force that is engaged in such an operation.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of
The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo,
Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military
Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a
trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct
professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and
economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to
become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic
Education.