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1. The Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution provides that in the case of "death . .. the Vice President shall become the President." But Section 1 of Article II requires the taking of the oath before "enter[ing] the Execution of his Office."
2. Daniel J. Boorstin, "History's Hidden Turning Points," U.S. News & World Report, 22April 1991, p. 52.
3. Oliver Stone's movie, JFK, is one example. See Joel Achenbach, "JFK Conspiracy: Myth vs. Facts,"
The Washington Post, 28 February 1992, p. C5.
4. See Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, Silent Coup (New York: St. Martin's, 1991).
6. Author Geoffrey Perret expressed the traditional view as follows: "The antimilitaristic side of the American character is forever on guard. Americans are so suspicious of military ambition that even when the armed forces win wars they are criticized as robustly as if they had lost them."
A Country Made By War (New York: Vintage, 1989),p. 560.
7. Andrew C. Janos, "The Seizure of Power: A Study of Force and Popular Consent, "Research Monograph
No. 16, Center for International Studies, Princeton University,1964, p. 39.
22. The original purpose of the Posse Comitatus Act (10 U.S.C. 1385) was to restrain Federal troops who had become deeply involved in law enforcement in the post-Civil War South--even in areas where civil government had been reestablished. See U.S. v. Hartley, 486 F. Supp. 1348, 1356 fn. 11 (M.D. Fla. 1980). The statute imposes criminal penalties for the improper uses of the military in domestic law enforcement matters. See
U.S. Code Congressional & Administrative News (St. Paul: West, 1981), p. 1786.
65. Military analyst Harry Summers insists that ROTC is a key reason military coups have not occurred in the United States as they have in other countries. He notes: "ROTC was designed to produce a well-rounded officer corps inculcated with the principles of freedom, democracy, and American values through close contact with civilian student son an open college campus, and through a liberal education taught by a primarily civilian academic faculty. And that's just what has happened." Harry Summers, "Stalking the Wrong Quarry,"
Washington Times, 7 December 1989, p. F-3.
71. An article by journalist David Wood grasped this trend. He quoted an Army officer asstating, "We are isolated--we don't have a lot of exposure to the outside world." Wood goes on to observe: "The nation's 2 million active duty soldiers are a self-contained society, one with its own solemn rituals, its own language, its own system of justice, andeven its own system of keeping time. . . .Only a decade ago, life within the confines of a military base might have seemed a spartan existence. But improving the garrison life has been a high priority. As a result, many bases have come to resemble an ideal of small-town America. . . . There is virtually no crime or poverty. Drug addicts and homeless are mere rumors from the outside." David Wood, "Duty, Honor, Isolation: Military More and More a Force Unto Itself,"
The Star-Ledger (Newark, N.J.) 21 April 1991, p. 1. See also Laura Elliot, "Behind the Lines,"
The Washingtonian, April 1991, p. 160.
83. The Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff also saw the military's future role in non-combat terms. Stating that there was "no plausible scenario" in which the United States would be involved in a military conflict in Europe or with elements of the former Soviet Union, he maintained that the likeliest use of military forces would be to address instability that could arise from migrations by poor peoples of the world to wealthier regions. He envisioned the military's role: "You would like to deal with this on a political and social level. The military's role should be subtle, similar to the role it plays now in Latin America--digging wells, building roads, and teaching the militaries of host nations how to operate under a democratic system. . . . When prevention fails, the military can be called to the more active role of running relief operations like the current one at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for fleeing Haitians. Operation Provide Comfort, the giant US military rescue mission to save Kurdish refugees who fled from the Iraqi army to the snow-covered mountains of southeastern Turkey last spring, may have been a precursor of what we can look forward to in the next decade if not the next century." As quoted by William Matthews, "Military Muscle to Shift to Humanitarian Help," Air Force Times, 6 January 1992, p. 14.
84. Leon Hader, "Reforming Israel--Before It's Too Late," Foreign Policy, No. 81(Winter 1990/91), 111.
85. Richard J. Barnet, "Reflections--The Uses Of Force," The New Yorker, 29 April 1991,p. 82.
86. Charles Lane, "The Newest War," p. 18.87.
Newsweek reported the following incident: When a Marine reconnaissance patrol skirmished with smugglers near the Arizona-Mexico border last December--firing over their heads to disperse them--one colonel near retirement age shook his head. He argued that combat-trained Marines shouldn't be diminishing hard-learned skills by squeezing off warning shots. "That teaches some very bad habits," he said. Bill Torque and Douglas Waller, "Warriors Without War," Newsweek , 19 March 1990, p. 18.
91. Shuger, "Pacify the Military," p. 25.
94. A caller to a radio talk show typified this view. She stated that while she appreciated the need for a military in case "something like Iraq came up again," she believed that the military ought to be put to work rebuilding the infrastructure and cleaning up the cities instead of "sitting around the barracks." "The Joel Spevak Show," Station WRC, Washington, D.C., 11 March 1992.
95. One example of the dangers of lowering standards to achieve social goals is "Project 100,000." Conceived as a Great Society program, youths with test scores considered unacceptably low were nevertheless allowed to enter the armed forces during the 1966-1972 period. The idea was to give the disadvantaged poor the chance to obtain education and discipline in a military environment, but the results were a fiasco. See Marilyn B. Young,
The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990 (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), p. 320.