StrictConstruct

U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) was established Oct. 1, 2002 to provide command and control of Department of Defense (DoD) homeland defense efforts and to coordinate defense support of civil authorities. USNORTHCOM defends America’s homeland — protecting our people, national power, and freedom of action.

USNORTHCOM’s specific mission:

USNORTHCOM anticipates and conducts Homeland Defense and Civil Support operations within the assigned area of responsibility to defend, protect, and secure the United States and its interests.

The following are culled from the posted transcripts of public addresses by General Gene Renuart, commander of USNORTHCOM. My comments in appear in parenthesis and in italics.

REMARKS BY GENERAL GENE RENUART WINTER NIGHT CLUB MEETING COLORADO SPRINGS, CO, NOVEMBER 20, 2007

I’ve just given you a snapshot of so many things that you might think about in the future, but what does that mean to us in the military? Where do we see the military going in 30 years? Without a doubt, the U.S. military will remain an essential instrument of our national power. To use the military capability that we have, when diplomatic information and economic options have been exhausted, will be appropriate.

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Our military forces likely will be used more often to enable and empower other nations to defend their own countries, helping those who are on the brink of survival, or new governments following the collapse of a despot regime.(Are you a General, or the President dictating foreign policy?–Sounds like someone has a Douglas MacArthur complex)

SNIP—-

In the future with nanotechnology, robotics, unmanned sensors, the unique capabilities employed by the military today may be commonplace across government – may be in your own home in many cases. But there are things that are designed for a specific purpose to provide a capability for a national will when it’s needed, and to provide help to our citizens when it’s required. (Another way to state you promote the Orwellian method of placing spying devices in every citizens private residence)

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As we look into the future and think about globalization and transnational corporations and information transfer, we must also examine the relationship that we’ll have with the private sector in the military of 2037. It’s not hard to imagine a close relationship. (Military-industrial complex anyone?) Today we’re already seeing great strides by the private sector to help out. Organizations like BENS, the Business Executives for National Security, will be common in the future of 2037. There’ll be worldwide activities. They will be focused on the integration of large corporations to provide assistance to nations when tragedy strikes. Companies like we see today – Wal-Mart and Home Depot – will just be examples of how business can lend a hand to a region in need……

…….. I see a future where nongovernmental organizations continue to work side-by-side with our military. Both groups benefit from the other’s involvement and the countries benefit from both. Today our military is governed by the principles of flexibility. And those same principles will allow us to adapt to having private organizations as part of the team. And we can still provide them on the battlefield the kind of protection they need – whether it’s legal or military. (So the US military is now taking on law enforcement duties?) But we also have to find a way for private institutions to help in what I term the growing of moderacy. (In other words, don’t complain or protest, or you will be labeled a radical and a danger to national security) And this is a concept where we have to provide both economic and educational opportunities for young men, primarily – but young women as well – in the developing countries as well. We’ve got to embrace the diversity that we saw in our Founding Fathers, (The Founding Fathers were pro-diversity?—You mean they were pro-inalienable rights, which is a different and superior concept) and we have to help export that to countries around the world. (Either by subsidies or by the barrel of the gun, right?) Diversity has made us what we are in our country. (No, the Constitution is what made this country to tolerate diversity, not the other way around!)

REMARKS BY GENERAL GENE RENUART HOMELAND DEFENSE SYMPOSIUM, COLORADO SPRINGS, 3 OCT 07

Now I want to shift gears a little bit. I’ve talked a little bit about this state engagement program. There’s another outreach program that I’d like to spend a minute or two on. Many of you also are engaged in non-profit work, in philanthropic work in support of youth programs around our country. We have a challenge in our Nation that we need to pay a lot of attention to. There’s a potential for radicalization of many of the youth in our country. There is potential in the increasing rise in radicalization of youth in countries around the world. Now, I’m talking primarily about young Muslim youth, but not always. (What other youth do you consider at risk? Goths? Skaters? Libertarians?) So what do we do? How do we prevent a young, isolated Muslim man in a city in our country from being disenfranchised, from not seeing a future, from feeling like he’s cut off from the rest of society, and then being influenced by a radical cleric preaching venom and fire? What do we do to ensure that that doesn’t happen in our Nation? (Sounds like a fear-mongering bedtime story)

There are countries in the world where that increasing isolation is occurring and you’re seeing a growing cadre of young warriors, young radicals being pulled over by the extremists, the very small minority of extremists within the Muslim faith. We’ve got to decide in our country that we’re going to invest in a strategy to minimize that potential in our Nation. (We do? Do I have any say if I want to participate or not in a state-mandated strategy for self-improvement?) Today there are very few educational institutions in our country that offer programs that focus on Muslim history, on the training of Muslim clerics. Today, if you want to become a cleric in the Muslim faith, you would travel outside the borders of our country to get a credible education. Why is that? How do we know the training that these young clerics are receiving? (What if I went to England to a divinity college to become a minister, does that make me a suspect too?)

And so in our case, in our Nation where we have such a proud history and a proud tradition of inclusion, of integration, of taking advantage of the diversity of our country, how can we afford to isolate a growing percentage of our population? I think we have to find ways to increase our outreach to the moderates of every faith, (What is your interpretation of a moderate? Would Martin Luther King be considered a moderate or a radical?) but certainly in the response to radical Muslim extremists who would take on acts of terrorism against our Nation.

How do we reach out to the moderates in that community to ensure that the young people growing up in there, many of whom are second- or third-generation Americans but are finding it important to renew the ties with their religion, how do we ensure that the religious growth that they experience is the same that we would expect in any other of our great religions in our Nation? (So religious moderation is now part of your national security responsibilities?) That takes patience and outreach; it takes an investment of time and, in some cases, an investment of dollars (Whose money? Like taxpayers money for faith-initiative programs?) to ensure that they have the same future that we would want any one of our children to have.

These threats of radical fundamentalists are increasingly agile. They are working in seams. Later on, you’re going to hear Lieutenant General Bob Elder talk to you about cyberspace and the threats, the potentials of threats, in cyberspace. Today, many of these radical extremist Web sites proliferate the Internet. Yet we protect the access to the Internet; we use it as the backbone of our financial institutions, of our educational institutions. How do we monitor (Yes General, How are you going to monitor, censor, and otherwise infringe on on the First Amendment in the name of national security?) that so that you can defeat, if you will, the venom that is there on some of those sites while maintaining the access to the cultural differences that are so important to our nation?

All of these are tough, tough challenges, and things that we at USNORTHCOM, our friends at Canada Command, and both teams, together with NORAD, work on day in and day out. (”Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” -C. S. Lewis )

(Photo credit to davidklasen.)