Did President Bush Disarm Our Military Serving at Home?

by Jack Lee

Have you been following todays lead story about a terrorist attack in Tennessee? A homegrown ihadi killed 4 unarmed Marines and wounded a police officer and a unarmed female sailor. Of course there’s a rush to get all kinds of news to you and that includes a side-story about then President George Bush, who signed a directive in 1992 ordering the disarming of military personnel at bases inside the USA. Sounds terrible doesn’t it?

Well, this isn’t quite true and I am here to set the record straight. The order pertained only to military and civilian DoD personnel engaged in law enforcement or security duties. Specifically, it stipulated they could not to carry a weapon unless it was in response to a credible threat to life or DoD property. It also said, “DoD personnel regularly engaged in law enforcement or security duties shall be armed.”

However, every president since could have modified this directive and returned arms to anyone with a law enforcement mission or acting as security personnel, at any time. This particular directive was aimed at the Army and other branches may have had slightly different rules. However, military base commanders saw where this was headed and in order to prevent the possibility of an “accident” on their watch, most chose to err on the side of caution and take these orders to the extreme. This often times resulted in soldiers being completely disarmed, except for training, and to date it has resulted in the needless deaths of too many military people, from Ft. Hood, to the Washington Naval shipyards and now to Chattanooga, Tenn.

Following the shootings at the Naval Shipyards Congress said they would take a look at the directive and make the appropriate changes. Well guess what? They didn’t do a darn thing. That’s right! Nearly two years have past and the Senate and House Armed Services Committees have taken no action to fix this security hole that threatens our sons and daughters.

Here’s the people serving on the House Committee: John McCain, Arizona, Chair, Jim Inhofe, Oklahoma, Jeff Sessions, Alabama, Roger Wicker, Mississippi, Kelly Ayotte, New Hampshire, Deb Fischer, Nebraska, Tom Cotton, Arkansas, Mike Rounds, South Dakota, Joni Ernst, Iowa, Thom Tillis, North Carolina, Dan Sullivan, Alaska, Mike Lee, Utah, Lindsey Graham, South Carolina, Ted Cruz, Texas, Jack Reed, Rhode Island Ranking Member, Bill Nelson, Florida, Claire McCaskill, Missouri, Joe Manchin, West Virginia, Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire, Kirsten Gillibrand, New York, Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut, Joe Donnelly, Indiana, Mazie Hirono, Hawaii, Tim Kaine, Virginia, Angus King, Maine, and Martin Heinrich, New Mexico.

There are a lot of powerful names on this committee. Which makes me wonder, if they couldn’t fix a simple clause on a Dept. of Defense directive to improve protection for our military personnel at home, what chance do you think we have of getting any reform from the good ol boys club? (Solution: Never vote for an incumbent again.)

There have been even more terrorist attacks prevented than carried out, but as the FBI director has warned they can’t possibly hope to keep this up. They can’t prevent every future attack, especially when it comes from some self-radicalized jihadi that is completely off their radar.

The growing threat by terrorist attacks on soft targets (unarmed military posts) within the United States demands that this directive be immediately amended, and we need to put the emphasis back where it belongs… on allowing our troops to protect themselves! Maybe you should consider writing a letter to John McCain and tell him if he doesn’t fix this immediately, we’ll march right into his office and demand an explanation, face to face. McCain was once a hero of mine, but no more. He’s gone way off the reservation, too many times. It’s time we boot him out of office.