Choice America Network

TREASON: “FIRING SQUAD”

FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES?

In Consideration of Peace

by Monica Benderman

Not long ago I had the opportunity to visit Washington DC to present statements at a Congressional Briefing hosted for the purpose of helping people to better understand the definition of Conscientious Objection.  Washington is the political capital of our country, and the politics are evident these days.  At every opportunity protestors participate in rallies and marches, all making political statements and pushing their organizations’ agendas, vying for the best opportunity to ensnare the greatest public notice for their cause.  Perhaps it has always been this way, perhaps my childhood memories are memories I want to have, not the realistic vision I should have.  Does it matter?  I have to wonder why the vision we have can’t be the vision that is real.   

My vision of Washington, the childhood memory, is that this city encompasses, above all others, the true history and heritage of the United States of America.  I remember walking along the mall, stopping at the reflecting pool and taking time to “reflect” on the images mirrored in its surface. 

I remember reading the inscriptions on the Lincoln Memorial, feeling the presence of proud spirit at the monuments honoring our veterans from the World Wars, Korea, and Viet Nam. 

I remember the sense of awe at what these Americans had fought for – they said it was for all of us – but how few of us seem to care.

The Library of Congress houses every book Americans have written. 

The Smithsonian honors our accomplishments from the greatest to the smallest – from journeys to the far reaches of space, to the history of the farmers who overcame great hardship, risking everything they had to help build our heartland to provide the sustaining resources the people of this country would need. 

Above all, the memory most vivid is the swinging pendulum standing before the first American flag.  I remember waiting for the time that the “magical doors” would open giving a momentary glimpse of a treasure from the beginnings of a new country – the doors closing far too quickly. But then maybe there’s more to it than simple preservation of an historic relic; just as a fleeting glimpse of the original Declaration of Independence calls to mind the same thought.  Maybe that is all we are shown of this history, because it is really all the time we care to give to this history – to our history – a nation some people still choose to call the “land of the free.” 

I sat on a bench at the end of the reflecting pool on my last visit to Washington, and I realized that I wanted our history back.  I wanted people to see the National Park I now sat in, those monuments to the sacrifice and courageous efforts of millions of United States citizens, as a place of peace.  I wanted the citizens of this country to give respect to what we once were, and to stop and reflect on the laws our founding fathers worked so hard to weave into the framework of the Constitution they believed would keep us free. 

The United States of America was founded on the blood, sweat and tears of people who fought for freedom – freedom to live with the rights that all people deserve.  This country was not established as an anarchy – those first Americans did not declare their independence from laws or from being governed.  The revolutionaries of our War for Independence fought for the right to establish a new country; one governed by laws based on humanity, and the freedoms afforded by respecting the rights of humanity- not the rights of the chosen few. 

Sitting at the reflecting pool, listening to the protestors and the speakers, I could not see the country we had been in any of their actions – I could only see the country we had become. 

People say our soldiers fought, and continue to fight for our freedom.  I say – our soldiers have no choice – our citizens give them no choice.  We were once a nation of laws, we have now become a nation that has lost sight of the freedoms our laws had given, and the service of our soldiers and veterans will become an endless sacrifice if our citizens continue to grow more committed to the belief that our world is their world, and our laws only interfere with their individual rights; forgetting that by demanding individual rights, we are also committing ourselves to respecting the rights of others – we should be anyway. 

Our founding fathers gave us laws because they knew the weaknesses of human beings.  Without laws, there is only chaos.  Looking into the reflecting pool, as a myriad of protestors stood shouting for their individual rights, what was mirrored back was not the peace our founding fathers hoped for as they signed their names to the Constitution they so painstakingly prepared, but the chaos they envisioned if their work had not been done.   

Eleven months ago, Sgt. Kevin Benderman was sent to military prison, convicted of the charge of Missing Movement or failure to get on a plane.  He was never given an order to do so, but the command found a way to avoid following the law – in many cases to completely disregard the law, justifying it by claiming that they never knew the law – and my husband was sent to jail for something he did not do.  Through his entire 10 years of service to this country, Kevin was a dedicated soldier, defending our Constitution by obeying commands, fulfilling every duty and serving honorably in Iraq.  He defended the Constitution, the document which supported his actions when he legally used military regulation 600-43 to file a Conscientious Objection to his further participation in war; thus exercising his freedom of choice in an even greater spirit of Truth than when he had done so by going to war. 

Kevin continues to face retribution for his actions, even as he serves out a sentence for a conviction based on his command’s incompetence and disregard for the law.  Inmates at the “corrections facility” where Kevin is confined live in chaos, never knowing when they will be given a Disciplinary Report and “corrective actions.”  They are never given a true understanding of the reasons, because the “good order” demanded by law is not maintained when a command believes it can interpret the law at its own whim, bending, re-wording and manipulating rules based on a false sense of power.  Kevin adheres to the regulations legally supported by our nation’s Constitution, not the rules as he or his command interpret them.   This is not always a popular choice, but it is the law, and for adhering to the law, Kevin is punished by those who have admitted to not even knowing what that law is.

We are a nation of laws, and it is our laws that give us freedom -- NOT our soldiers, nor waging wars in foreign countries where people might threaten us.  Our laws were created because people do not have enough respect for freedom, nor enough understanding of freedom to allow freedom for all without our laws.

Our soldiers volunteer to defend our Constitution, our laws – and therefore our freedom.  The complete disregard for our laws now evident in the actions of people from every range of the political spectrum is a travesty and disrespectful of the sacrifice made by those who have had the courage to put their lives on the line to defend the laws that keep us all free. 

Sgt. Kevin Benderman chose to exercise his moral and ethical choice in a manner that is supported by the laws of our country.  He is proud of the principles by which he has chosen to live.  He did not choose to run from his conscience, he did not choose to hide it in “safe haven.”  He stood proudly for his beliefs.  He faced the injustice given to him with his head high – knowing that his actions defended the integrity of the vision our founding fathers had for a country they hoped would be a beacon of freedom – a country built on laws that allow all of us the right to peace. 

There was no peaceful memory from my time near the reflecting pool in Washington DC on this last visit.  There was sadness brought by the demonstration of disrespect for the history that stood in the shadows of a thousand different people speaking over each other demanding their rights, as they disrupted the memory of millions of Americans who had used the freedoms our Constitution allowed, and as soldiers of war and soldiers of peace, let their conscience lead them in service – their actions, not their words, defending the Laws on which our nation was founded. 

Monica Benderman is the wife of Sgt. Kevin Benderman, currently serving a 15-month sentence for Missing Movement, at the RCF, Ft. Lewis, WA – an American soldier and a Conscientious Objector to war and the direction this country is currently heading. 

Please visit www.BendermanDefense.org and www.BendermanTimeline.com for more information. 

Monica and Kevin may be reached at mdawnb@coastalnow.net

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

BUSHFALL

Click the Lightning Bolt and Enjoy!

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

By William M. Arkin

On Monday, June 19, about 4,000 government workers representing more than 50 federal agencies from the State Department to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission will say goodbye to their families and set off for dozens of classified emergency facilities stretching from the Maryland and Virginia suburbs to the foothills of the Alleghenies. They will take to the bunkers in an "evacuation" that my sources describe as the largest "continuity of government" exercise ever conducted, a drill intended to prepare the U.S. government for an event even more catastrophic than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The exercise is the latest manifestation of an obsession with government survival that has been a hallmark of the Bush administration since 9/11, a focus of enormous and often absurd time, money and effort that has come to echo the worst follies of the Cold War. The vast secret operation has updated the duck-and-cover scenarios of the 1950s with state-of-the-art technology -- alerts and updates delivered by pager and PDA, wireless priority service, video teleconferencing, remote backups -- to ensure that "essential" government functions continue undisrupted should a terrorist's nuclear bomb go off in downtown Washington.

But for all the BlackBerry culture, the outcome is still old-fashioned black and white: We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars on alternate facilities, data warehouses and communications, yet no one can really foretell what would happen to the leadership and functioning of the federal government in a catastrophe.

After 9/11, The Washington Post reported that President Bush had set up a shadow government of about 100 senior civilian managers to live and work outside Washington on a rotating basis to ensure the continuity of national security. Since then, a program once focused on presidential succession and civilian control of U.S. nuclear weapons has been expanded to encompass the entire government. From the Department of Education to the Small Business Administration to the National Archives, every department and agency is now required to plan for continuity outside Washington.

Yet according to scores of documents I've obtained and interviews with half a dozen sources, there's no greater confidence today that essential services would be maintained in a disaster. And no one really knows how an evacuation would even be physically possible.

Moreover, since 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, the definition of what constitutes an "essential" government function has been expanded so ridiculously beyond core national security functions -- do we really need patent and trademark processing in the middle of a nuclear holocaust? -- that the term has become meaningless. The intent of the government effort may be laudable, even necessary, but a hyper-centralized approach based on the Cold War model of evacuations and bunkering makes it practically worthless.

That the continuity program is so poorly conceived, and poorly run, should come as no surprise. That's because the same Federal Emergency Management Agency that failed New Orleans after Katrina, an agency that a Senate investigating committee has pronounced "in shambles and beyond repair," is in charge of this enormous effort to plan for the U.S. government's survival.

Continuity programs began in the early 1950s, when the threat of nuclear war moved the administration of President Harry S. Truman to begin planning for emergency government functions and civil defense. Evacuation bunkers were built, and an incredibly complex and secretive shadow government program was created.

At its height, the grand era of continuity boasted the fully operational Mount Weather, a civilian bunker built along the crest of Virginia's Blue Ridge, to which most agency heads would evacuate; the Greenbrier hotel complex and bunker in West Virginia, where Congress would shelter; and Raven Rock, or Site R, a national security bunker bored into granite along the Pennsylvania-Maryland border near Camp David, where the Joint Chiefs of Staff would command a protracted nuclear war. Special communications networks were built, and evacuation and succession procedures were practiced continually.

When the Soviet Union crumbled, the program became a Cold War curiosity: Then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney ordered Raven Rock into caretaker status in 1991. The Greenbrier bunker was shuttered and a 30-year-old special access program was declassified three years later.

Then came the terrorist attacks of the mid-1990s and the looming Y2K rollover, and suddenly continuity wasn't only for nuclear war anymore. On Oct. 21, 1998, President Bill Clinton signed Presidential Decision Directive 67, "Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government Operations." No longer would only the very few elite leaders responsible for national security be covered. Instead, every single government department and agency was directed to see to it that they could resume critical functions within 12 hours of a warning, and keep their operations running at emergency facilities for up to 30 days. FEMA was put in charge of this broad new program.

On 9/11, the program was put to the test -- and failed. Not on the national security side: Vice President Cheney and others in the national security leadership were smoothly whisked away from the capital following procedures overseen by the Pentagon and the White House Military Office. But like the mass of Washingtonians, officials from other agencies found themselves virtually on their own, unsure of where to go or what to do, or whom to contact for the answers.

In the aftermath, the federal government was told to reinvigorate its continuity efforts. Bush approved lines of succession for civil agencies. Cabinet departments and agencies were assigned specific emergency responsibilities. FEMA issued new preparedness guidelines and oversaw training. A National Capital Region continuity working group established in 1999, comprising six White House groups, 15 departments and 61 agencies, met to coordinate.

But all the frenetic activity did not produce a government prepared for the worst. A year after 9/11, and almost three years after the deadline set in Clinton's 1998 directive, the Government Accounting Office evaluated 38 agencies and found that not one had addressed all the issues it had been ordered to. A 2004 GAO audit of 34 government continuity-of-operations plans found total confusion on the question of essential functions. One unnamed organization listed 399 such functions. A department included providing "speeches and articles for the Secretary and Deputy Secretary" among its essential duties, while neglecting many of its central programs.

The confusion and absurdity have continued, according to documents I've collected over the past few years. In June 2004, FEMA told federal agencies that essential services in a catastrophe would include not only such obvious ones as electric power generation and disaster relief but also patent and trademark processing, student aid and passport processing. A month earlier, FEMA had told states and local communities that library services should be counted as essential along with fire protection and law enforcement.

None of this can be heartening to Americans who want to believe that in a crisis, their government can distinguish between what is truly essential and what isn't -- and provide it.

Just two years ago, an exercise called Forward Challenge '04 pointed up the danger of making everyone and everything essential: Barely an hour after agencies were due to arrive at their relocation sites, the Office of Management and Budget asked the reconstituted government to identify emergency funding requirements.

As one after-action report for the exercise later put it in a classic case of understatement: "It was not clear . . . whether this would be a realistic request at that stage of an emergency."

This year's exercise, Forward Challenge '06, will be the third major interagency continuity exercise since 9/11. Larger than Forward Challenge '04 and the Pinnacle exercise held last year, it requires 31 departments and agencies (including FEMA) to relocate. Fifty to 60 are expected to take part.

According to government sources, the exercise will test the newly created continuity of government alert conditions -- called COGCONs -- that emulate the DEFCONs of the national security community. Forward Challenge will begin with a series of alerts via BlackBerry and pager to key officials. It will test COGCON 1, the highest level of preparedness, in which each department and agency is required to have at least one person in its chain of command and sufficient staffing at alternate operating facilities to perform essential functions.

Though key White House officials and military leadership would be relocated via the Pentagon's Joint Emergency Evacuation Program (JEEP), the civilians are on their own to make it to their designated evacuation points.

But fear not: Each organization's COOP, or continuity of operations plan, details the best routes to the emergency locations. The plans even spell out what evacuees should take with them (recommended items: a combination lock, a flashlight, two towels and a small box of washing powder).

Can such an exercise, announced well in advance, hope to re-create any of the tensions and fears of a real crisis? How do you simulate the experience of driving through blazing, radiated, panic-stricken streets to emergency bunker sites miles away?

As the Energy Department stated in its review of Forward Challenge '04, "a method needs to be devised to realistically test the ability of . . . federal offices to relocate to their COOP sites using a scenario that simulates . . . the monumental challenges that would be involved in evacuating the city."

With its new plans and procedures, Washington may think it has thought of everything to save itself. Forward Challenge will no doubt be deemed a success, and officials will pronounce the continuity-of-government project sound. There will be lessons to be learned that will justify more millions of dollars and more work in the infinite effort to guarantee order out of chaos.

But the main defect -- a bunker mentality that considers too many people and too many jobs "essential" -- will remain unchallenged.

William M. Arkin writes the Early Warning blog for washingtonpost.com and is the author of "Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs and Operations in the 9/11 World" (Steerforth Press).