US Army to Hold Exercise Treating Tea Party in SC as the Enemy

• Army colonel ignites firestorm with article on crushing a ‘tea party insurgency’ – Darlington, S.C.‏

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My Friend Dean Allen Responds to the Colonel:

 

Bill, & Friends: Here is the text of the comment I left on the article at the Small War Journal:

I am extremely offended by this article. Col. Benson is clearly writing to incite an insurrection here in South Carolina.

Suppose I taught the same course at Leavenworth, and created a scenario where the popular Governor of South Carolina, the Hon. Nikki Haley was elected president of the United States and Rev. Jessie Jackson (born in Greenville, South Carolina)invaded the state with an army of NAACP and Black Panther Party types, took over our capitol at Columbia and held  president-elect Nikki Haley hostage. Then my old unit from Vietnam, the 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile) had to be recalled from the Middle East to put down the NAACP insurrection, rescue the president elect, and hang the Rev. Jessie Jackson for treason?

There would be a leftwing firestorm over my scenario. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and the New York Times would whine it was unfair because Jessie Jackson has never advocated overthrow of the government and neither have most members of the NAACP. I would be called a "racist" for even suggesting the idea.

Col. Benson’s scenario is incredibly insulting on numerous fronts. He attempts to inject race to the Tea Party movement where there is simply no racial element involved.

News flash Col. Benson, the tea party movement did help elect the current, and very popular, Governor of South Carolina, the Hon. Nikki Haley from Bamburg. She was also endorsed by Gov. Sarah Palin, and both Governors are very supportive of tea party goals and objectives. Now, for the fly in your ointment – the popular, tea party supported, conservative, Republican, Governor of South Carolina is both female, and she is non-white! Just for your information, the Tea Party groups in the lower part of South Carolina also elected a pro- Tea Party man to Congress in the 1st district of SC (Includes Charleston.) His name is Tim Scott, and he is black as the ace of spades!

All of this says your scenario for both South Carolina, and the tea party movement in general, is hogwash. Your scenario is either lies and propaganda, or in the alternative, incredibly sloppy scholarship that indicates a total lack of simple research and fact checking.

At one place in his repulsive article, Col. Benson actually says the Army will not stand for the people uprising against the constitution. Colonel, I have a news flash for you. What you are describing, in chilling detail, is the government violating the constitution, and the people rising up to restore our constitution!

I have taken that oath to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic – I have taken it six times. I took it at age 15 when I joined the Civil Air Patrol, I took it twice when I enlisted, and reenlisted, in the US Army, I took it two more times when I served six years in the SC State Guard, and I took the same oath when I was sworn in as a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States. My country has awarded me 22 medals and ribbons for service, combat, and valor. My Comrades in the VFW elected me a Post Commander – twice – and also a State Chaplain for South Carolina… three times.

Col. Benson, next time you teach your insane course at Leavenworth, I suggest you start off by showing your officers the movie THE PATRIOT starring Mel Gibson. That will give them a good idea of what would be waiting for them here if they decided to invade South Carolina and treat us like we were Bosnia. Have you ever heard of the Swamp Fox, Francis Marion? He operated not too far from Darlington. Do you know what we did to a British Major Tarleton at Cowpens? Do you know that Lt. Col. William Barrett Travis was born down the road from here at Abbeville, South Carolina? Have you ever read his last letter from the Alamo?

Have you considered how you are going to get your federal troops from where they are now, to Darlington, SC? How do you plan to secure your supply lines? Do you really think you will have an easy time in North Carolina or Georgia?

I doubt if Col. Benson and "Associate Professor" Jennifer Webber have studied any American history. If you had studied history, you would know only five states secceeded before Lincoln’s Army comitted an act of war and attempted to reinforce Ft. Sumter. [Actually, Major Anderson occupying Ft. Sumter on Christmas eve 1860 in the dead of night, was an act of war.] That prompted secession movements in eight other states from Texas to Virginia.

Forget the tea party, invade Darlington and you are going to have to deal with 50,000 very pissed off NASCAR fans. Colonel, that’s roughly three or four infantry divisions, only NASCAR fans are not infantry, and most of them already have Confederate flags.

White Tea Party members in South Carolina are not randomly killing non-whites, we are helping elect them Governor and Congressman, as noted above. In fact, both Nikki Haley and Tim Scott are regular speakers at Tea Party events all over SC. They are not simply tokens either, we (tea party activists) worked very hard to elect these two non-white officials over RINO establishment candidates in primaries. Those RINO establishment candidates, incidentally, are all white.

White people are not randomly shooting non-whites in South Carolina. There was a fellow who opened fire on a bunch of Sikhs in church this past Sunday morning… in Wisconsin, not South Carolina. No, he was not tea party either. Are you gaming the wrong scenario? Do you remember Maj. Hassan who killed 14 people at Ft. Hood?He was not tea party either, he was a Moslem with ties to one of the Imams who planned 9/11.

The only open racist in South Carolina politics, as far as I am aware, is State Senator Jake Knotts who embarassed our state and our Republican Party, a few years ago by calling Governor Nikki Haley a "Raghead."

Col. since you did very little in the way of research before insulting the government and people of South Carolina, allow me to give you more facts. Our Governor, whom Sen. Jake Knotts called a "Raghead" is of Indian descent and race. Her parents are members of the Sikh faith. Her father is one of those devout Sikhs who has never cut his hair and wears his big red turban. He wore it proudly to the inauguration when his daughter was sworn in as our Governor. Governor Haley converted to the Methodist faith 15 years ago, when she married her husband Michael Haley.

Incidentally, Michael Haley, the white Methodist, married to our Governor, is also a Major in the South Carolina National Guard. He has just been deployed to Afghanistan for a tour of duty. Another member of our SC Air National Guard is United States Senator Lindsey Graham who is a full Colonel in the Air Force JAG Corps.

The idea you would "nationalize" our Guard, and then turn it against our people is simply ludicrous! You will have more than a few tea party sympathizing local cops to worry about.

By the way, South Carolina is the only state in the nation where the Adjutant General, is elected by a vote of the people. Ours, Major Gen. Robert Livingston, commanded the 218th Combat Brigade of the SC Army National Guard in Afghanistan for a year. While there, he distinguished himself, was decorated, and his troops loved and greatly respected him. The runner up in our recent election for Lt. Governor of South Carolina is a retired Lt. Colonel who also served with distinction in combat in Afghanistan.

Colonel Benson, associate professor Webber,are you aware the Citadel is located in Charleston, South Carolina? Did you know that the Citadel has supplied more officers to the United States Army than any schools except West Point, and Texas A & M? I have a friend who is an Aggie and a retired Brigadier General living in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Know which school educated the fourth largest number of officers in the US Army? That would be VMI… the VIRGINIA Military Institute.

Colonel, if you are going to invade South Carolina, you are going to need to go to Cuba, Venezuela, or Red China to find officers willing to invade here.

Know where the United States Marines are trained? Yep, Parris Island. That is in Beaufort, SOUTH CAROLINA just for your information, and yeah, most of them are Southern boys and tea party sympathizers.

I am calling my friend Nikki Haley tomorrow. She will be calling you, asking for an apology to the people of South Carolina for one of the stupidest and most insulting articles ever written.

The lady in the photo with me is Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. She is Chairman of the Tea Party Caucus in the US House of Representatives. She also sits on the House Select Committee on Intelligence and gets the same classified intelligence briefings daily the president and Senator Lindsey Graham get. Do you understand what a nightmare it would be for you to plan an illegal invasion of South carolina? No. You don’t appear to understand much of anything and clearly you did not think your scenario through much as all before shooting off your mouth. Col. Benson, you need to be in Leavenworth, but not teaching school. You are a disgrace to your uniform and to my United States Army.
Dean Allen

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— On Mon, 8/6/12, Bill Rhodes <bill3rinc@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Bill Rhodes <bill3rinc@gmail.com>
Subject: Fwd: Army colonel ignites firestorm with article on crushing a ‘tea party insurgency’ – Darlington, S.C.
To: "Dean Allen" <dean@rattlesnakerevolution.com>
Date: Monday, August 6, 2012, 3:36 PM

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: <chris@chrislawton.com
Date: Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 8:44 AM
Subject: Army colonel ignites firestorm with article on crushing a ‘tea party insurgency’ – Darlington, S.C.
To: Christopher Lawton <chris@chrislawton.com

Urgent to read. 

Army colonel ignites firestorm with article on crushing a ‘tea party insurgency’

• TEA Party
• August 5, 2012
• By: Anthony Martin

http://www.examiner.com/article/army-colonel-ignites-firestorm-with-article-on-crushing-a-tea-party-insurgency

The fictitious scenario used in the Army report as a teaching tool is a future insurrection of "tea party activists" in South Carolina. As the scenario goes, the tea party group stages a takeover of the town of Darlington, S.C. The mayor is placed under house arrest and prevented from exercising his duties. The police chief, the county sheriff, and other law enforcement officials are removed from office and told not to interfere. The city council is dissolved. The governor of the state, who had previously expressed solidarity with tea party goals, does little to address the situation.

A news conference is called by the new town leaders, all tea party activists, who tell the media that due to the failure of central government to address the concerns of the citizens, the Declaration of Independence has been re-imposed and the local government has been declared null and void. From the report:

When the leaders of the group hold a press conference to announce their goals, they invoke the Declaration of Independence and argue that the current form of the federal government is not deriving its “just powers from the consent of the governed” but is actually “destructive to these ends.” Therefore, they say, the people can alter or abolish the existing government and replace it with another that, in the words of the Declaration, “shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” While mainstream politicians and citizens react with alarm, the “tea party” insurrectionists in South Carolina enjoy a groundswell of support from other tea party groups, militias, racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, anti-immigrant associations such as the Minutemen, and other right-wing groups.

Several items of interest are to be noted in the scenario the Army uses to describe the tea party activists — "right wing," "extremists," "insurrectionists," all of whom are lumped together with militias and organizations that are considered "racist" and "anti-immigration."

By contrast, those who oppose the tea party are referred to as "mainstream."

The obvious question that arises is why would this sort of scenario, with its obviously biased and skewed portrayals, be presented as a teaching tool to young soldiers? Why would the U.S. military consider the tea party to be "extremist" or "insurrectionist?" And why would the tea party be classified together with groups that are "racist, "anti-immigration," and "extremist right wing?"

In the numerous tea party rallies that have occurred across the nation no racism was noted by any observer. Speakers included persons of all races and ethnic backgrounds. No sentiment was expressed against legal immigration but outrage was directed toward those break the law and enter the country by illegal means. And the charge that the tea party is extremist right wing is difficult to justify given that the main thrust of the movement is the protest against runaway government spending that has placed the nation on the brink of economic ruin due to its enormous and unsustainable debt.

Yet repeatedly since the election of Barack Obama in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has referred to the tea party as "potential homegrown terrorists."