It used to be that the worst things military families had to worry about were the maiming, capture or death of their service members. And, as the wife of a 26-year Air Force special ops and combat search and rescue pilot, I always felt like that was enough.

But now, as the mother-in-law of an Army Guard combat medic and the mother of a West Point cadet, I have another item on that list: my boys being ordered into action against U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.

It’s the subject of an article in the July issue of Small Wars Journal: “Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A ‘Vision’ of the Future.”

SWJ carries bylines of an impressive array of retired generals and colonels and a former Assistant Secretary of Defense. It’s cited by periodicals like Time, Washington Post, New York Times, New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Christian Science Monitor. 

The article posits a scenario in which an “extremist militia motivated by the goals of the ‘tea party’ movement” takes over Darlington, South Carolina. The governor asks the feds for help. The President calls in units from Fort Bragg, Fort Stewart, Camp Lejeune and the South Carolina National Guard to put down the insurrection.

It’s curious, by the way, that the authors–Col. Kevin Benson of the Army’s University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies at Fort Leavenworth and Dr. Jennifer Weber, Associate Professor of History at the University of Kansas–choose a Tea Party scenario.

The Tea Party gets permits to hold meetings supporting the Constitution.

Unlike, say, the Occupy movement. Or the May Day rioters. Occupy has had anarchist theorists–Kalle Lasn, David Graeber–behind it from the beginning. Anarchy and lawlessness are an inherent part of the intellectual framework of the Occupy movement.

But I digress.

The authors write:

 A key and understudied aspect of full spectrum operations is how to conduct these operations within American borders.  If we face a period of persistent global conflict as outlined in successive National Security Strategy documents, then Army officers are professionally obligated to consider the conduct of operations on U.S. soil.

Never mind any discussion of whether this  might violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which says:

[I]t shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress.

Just a quick, and similarly uncritical, invocation of the Insurrection Act, and it’s off to the races:

Americans will expect the military to execute without pause and as professionally as if it were acting overseas.  The Army cannot disappoint the American people, especially in such a moment.

Remember, what the authors are calmly discussing here is the mass killing of American citizens on American soil.

By American soldiers and Marines.

Without a trial.

The Army can’t disappoint the American people. Oh, no. But it can, according to a faculty member at the Army’s University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies, kill them.

Col. Benson and Prof. Weber strike me as way scarier than the Tea Party. As the Washington Times points out, the Administration canned a professor at the Joint Forces Staff College in June for saying that the United States is at war with Islam.

Why?

Because what he was teaching wasn’t U.S. policy.

Col. Benson is still teaching at UFMCS.

But, hey, it’s only one article.

In other news, the Department of Homeland Security began taking delivery in June of up to 450 million rounds of hollow point .40 caliber ammunition. They’re currently soliciting bids (here) on the FedBizOpps website, for sale of another 750 million rounds of ammunition of all kinds, including buckshot, slugs and .357 magnum rounds.

Hollow point bullets are designed to expand inside the body in order to cause as much carnage as possible. They’re prohibited in international warfare by the Hague Convention, which NATO follows. Unfortunately, nobody thought to prohibit their use within a country.

Last week, the Social Security Administration posted on the same FedBizOpps website, soliciting bids for 174,000 rounds of hollow point bullets.

 And, yesterday, InfoWars pointed out that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also posted a bid request last week: for 46,000 rounds of hollow point ammo for the National Weather Service.

(NOAA quickly announced it was a mistake: The ammo was actually for the National Marine Fisheries Service. Because that explains everything.)

So now we’ve got:

• an Army think tank faculty member writing about mobilizing the Army, Guard, and Marines against American citizens;
• government agencies stockpiling high-powered anti-personnel ammunition.

Oh, for the old days when NOAA wanted to waste our money on $5,000 magicians.

And when the worst thing a military family had to worry about was its service member being killed.