The Tip Of The Tea Party's Spear

I've talked about the Oath Keepers before, a network of former military and police here in the states, formed after the election of Obama, that are convinced that the government will declare martial law.  These folks are already planning the armed resistance to what they see as inevitable.  With the movement now only approaching its first year, a number of active-duty military are taking notice of the Oath Keeper's call to resist what they say would be unconstitutional orders to impose martial law, and there are some in our military who are ready to answer that call, as MoJo's Justine Sharrock details...active military like "Lee" Pray.

THE .50 CALIBER Bushmaster bolt action rifle is a serious weapon. The model that Pvt. 1st Class Lee Pray is saving up for has a 2,500-yard range and comes with a Mark IV scope and an easy-load magazine. When the 25-year-old drove me to a mall in Watertown, New York, near the Fort Drum Army base, he brought me to see it in its glass case—he visits it periodically, like a kid coveting something at the toy store. It'll take plenty of military paychecks to cover the $5,600 price tag, but he considers the Bushmaster essential in his preparations to take on the US government when it declares martial law.

His belief that that day is imminent has led Pray to a group called Oath Keepers [1], one of the fastest-growing "patriot" organizations on the right. Founded last April by Yale-educated lawyer and ex-Ron Paul aide Stewart Rhodes, the group has established itself as a hub in the sprawling anti-Obama movement that includes Tea Partiers, Birthers, and 912ers. Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, and Pat Buchanan have all sung its praises, and in December, a grassroots summit [2] it helped organize drew such prominent guests as representatives Phil Gingrey [3] and Paul Broun [4], both Georgia Republicans.

There are scores of patriot groups, but what makes Oath Keepers unique is that its core membership consists of men and women in uniform, including soldiers, police, and veterans. At regular ceremonies in every state, members reaffirm their official oaths of service, pledging to protect the Constitution—but then they go a step further, vowing to disobey "unconstitutional" orders from what they view as an increasingly tyrannical government.

(More after the jump...)

Pray (who asked me to use his middle name rather than his first) and five fellow soldiers based at Fort Drum take this directive very seriously. In the belief that the government is already turning on its citizens, they are recruiting military buddies, stashing weapons, running drills, and outlining a plan of action. For years, they say, police and military have trained side by side in local anti-terrorism exercises around the nation. In September 2008, the Army began training [5] the 3rd Infantry's 1st Brigade Combat Team to provide humanitarian aid following a domestic disaster or terror attack—and to help with crowd control and civil unrest if need be.
(The ACLU has expressed concern about this deployment.)And some of Pray's comrades were guinea pigs for military-grade sonic weapons, only to see them used by Pittsburgh police against protesters last fall.

Most of the men's gripes revolve around policies that began under President Bush but didn't scare them so much at the time. "Too many conservatives relied on Bush's character and didn't pay attention," founder Rhodes told me. "Only now, with Obama, do they worry and see what has been done. I trusted Bush to only go after the terrorists. But what do you think can happen down the road when they say, 'I think you are a threat to the nation?'"

In Pray's estimate, it might not be long (months, perhaps a year) before President Obama finds some pretext—a pandemic, a natural disaster, a terror attack—to impose martial law, ban interstate travel, and begin detaining citizens en masse. One of his fellow Oath Keepers, a former infantryman, advised me to prepare a "bug out" bag with 39 items including gas masks, ammo, and water purification tablets, so that I'd be ready to go "when the shit hits the fan."

When it does, Pray and his buddies plan to go AWOL and make their way to their "fortified bunker"—the home of one comrade's parents in rural Idaho—where they've stocked survival gear, generators, food, and weapons. If it becomes necessary, they say, they will turn those guns against their fellow soldiers.

And soldiers like Pray believe most of all that they are doing their duty to serve the country and its people. This means being ready to lead an active revolt against their comrades in arms if necessary.  America was formed from such men, after all.  But we're not exactly under the yoke of an oppressive foreign ruler.

Well, most of us believe that last statement, anyway.  Not Lee Pray.

Now Pray is both a Birther and a Truther. He believes he is following an illegitimate, foreign-born president in a war on terror launched by a government plot—9/11. He admires soldiers like Army reservist Major Stefan Frederick Cook, who volunteered for a deployment last May and then sued to avoid it—claiming that Obama is not a natural-born citizen and is thus unfit for command. Pray himself had been eager to go to Iraq when his own unit deployed last June, but he smashed both knees falling from a crane rig and the injuries kept him stateside. In September, he was demoted from specialist to private first class—he'd been written up for bullshit infractions, he claims, after seeking help for a drinking problem. His job on base involves operating and maintaining heavy machinery; the day before we met, he and his fellow "undeployables" had attached a snowplow to a Humvee, their biggest assignment in a while. He spends idle hours at the now-quiet base researching the New World Order and conspiracies about swine flu quarantine camps—and doing his best to "wake up" other soldiers.

Pray isn't sure how to do this and still cover his ass. He talks to me on the record and agrees to be photographed, even as he hints that the CIA may be listening in on his phone. Although I met him through contacts from the group's Facebook page, Pray, fearing retribution, keeps his Oath Keepers ties unofficial. (Rhodes encourages active-duty soldiers to remain anonymous, noting that a group with large numbers of anonymous members can instill in its adversaries the fear of the unknown—a "great force multiplier.") For a time, Pray insisted we communicate via Facebook (safer than regular email, he claims). Driving me from the mall back to my motel, he takes a new route. He says unmarked black cars sometimes trail him. It sounds paranoid. Then again, when you're an active-duty soldier contemplating treason, some level of paranoia is probably sensible.

There's that word I was looking for in the story...treason. It's a strong word.  We expect the people who are our soldiers to know what that is, people trained to take lives when necessary to protect us must have discipline and honor.

What happens when, as a soldier, you no longer believe your military commander-in-chief has that?  You believe that he is not a citizen and therefore not the legitimate President, or that he stole the election, or that he deserves to be removed from office, or that your home state should secede from the union as a result?

You believe one man's treason is another man's resistance, like thousands of others in the Tea Party movement.  The latest Economist/YouGov poll findings are pretty sobering in light of the growing Oath Keepers:

• Just over one in five (21%) Americans agrees with the statement that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, the "birther" movement’s principal claim. Republicans are twice as likely as Democrats and independents to say this. (Tea party identifiers are actually a little less likely than Republicans to question where the president was born.)

• However, tea-party members are overwhelmingly convinced—more so than Republicans—that Barack Obama is a socialist (85% say he is). Only 34% of all Americans (and 66% of Republicans) believe that is the case.

• 14% of white Americans say Barack Obama is a "racist who hates white people". More than one in four Republicans agree.

• One in five Americans thinks "ACORN stole the 2008 election". A majority of Republicans (52%) agree.

• On the question of who is more qualified to be president—Sarah Palin or Barack Obama—88% of Democrats choose Mr Obama; 66% of Republicans pick Mrs Palin.

• 15% of Americans take the view that Barack Obama should be impeached. (Compare that to a 2006 CNN poll in which 30% of Americans said George Bush should be impeached.) Over a third (36%) of Republicans and 44% of tea-party identifiers would impeach Mr Obama.

• One in five tea-party identifiers want their state to secede from the union, something only 7% of Americans overall would like. Midwesterners are the most likely region to favour secession.

He's a Socialist.  He's not American.  He's a white-hating racist.  He should be impeached.  We should secede.  There are millions of Americans who believe at least one of those.  Some of those beliefs are majority-held opinions among Republicans and among Tea Party members.

Having said that, there are thousands of active-duty military who want nothing to do with this idiocy and choose to make sacrifices that the rest of us do not have to.  These soldiers, sailors, airmen and corpsmen deserve every ounce of our respect for that.

But you'd better believe that if there are significant chunks of ordinary American civilians out there that believe this stuff, then those beliefs affect our active-duty military.  If you don't think that the Birthers, the Tenthers, and the 9-12ers are potentially dangerous, you haven't been paying attention.

The Oath Keepers, after all, are.  If, like Lee Pray, you believe all this nonsense and you believe that resisting it is your duty...what are you really prepared to do?  How far are you really prepared to go?

I believe America will find that out soon.