This limitation allowed for the deployment of troops as convenient to the agenda of the Administration and the military-industrial complex, but ensured that sufficient active duty units remained available for domestic operations.
The attack on Iran was however the final straw that preceded the total meltdown of the Middle East.
As part of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, measures were in place to allow Posse Comitatus laws to be ignored domestically. This was activated by executive order and active duty and reserve U.S. Army units were used to reinforce the National Guard in operations against domestic terrorists and sleeper cells.
The terrorist attack had precipitated the final mortal blow to liberty and the destruction of the United States of America as a Constitutional Republic. It was true that the erosion of liberty and the Bill of Rights had been going on for some time; the Constitution was viewed by many as a dead document, and the measures had already been put in place for the implementation of a state of emergency.
The attack had been a terrible thing, but at the same time it was so convenient to the agenda of the Administration. Everything since the attack had been the death rattle of liberty as the police surveillance state was fully imposed.
Due process and Habeas Corpus were suspended, and the NDAA allowed arrest and internment without probable cause or trial on the simple suspicion by the authorities that someone posed a terrorist threat; a system that was easily abused.
Everything in society was now centered on compliance and obedience to authority. Questioning of the orders of those in authority positions was not tolerated. America was no longer the land of the free, but anyone with a mind had seen that coming for a long time.
Anyone with ideas counter to the official line, or who argued or challenged authority, was labeled a ‘domestic terrorist’, arrested and interned in ‘corrective and reeducation facilities’.
Following the activation of the NDAA by Executive Order, a state of emergency was implemented. It was necessary, because another terrorist attack could happen at any time, and anyone could be a terrorist. There was a lot of talk about sleeper cells and many citizens were arrested and interned without trial. ‘Extremist terrorist’ organizations, including Patriot and conservative organizations such as the Tea Party, were outlawed.
It wasn’t really clear to the general public exactly what happened next, given that they only got their information from the Administration via the heavily state directed mainstream media, and the internet was now under heavy lockdown. However, the economic dangers that had been looming and fueled by the continuous policy of ‘Quantitive Easing’, or money printing by the Federal Reserve, finally came home to roost.
The economy went over the cliff. There was much discussion that the actual precipitator of the plunge was the cabal of bankers who were the real power behind the Regime; they had pulled the financial plug, causing a massive run on the banks and hyperinflation, just like they had done in 1929 to cause the Great Depression. But who really knew, given the lockdown?
The effect was ultimately to cripple the economy, destroying the middle classes. What better way to turn the screws of citizen compliance when so many were now reliant on entitlement handouts?
The ‘progressive’ agenda of collective socialism was nearing its ultimate fulfillment; coerced redistribution of wealth, except now no-one was generating any wealth to feed the monster of the dependent welfare classes.
Statist authoritarian big central government was the order of the day, even though those policies spelled the death of the country. Many ‘progressives’ yearned for that, so that the ‘United Socialist States of America’ could rise from the ashes.
The government of the United States of America was no longer an ‘Administration’; it was a totalitarian Regime.
However, what the Regime had not predicted was that the Chinese, themselves suffering from the global financial collapse that ensued from this, then decided to take action.
For years China had infiltrated American cyber networks. They had perfected the cyber-attack and had penetrated into all aspects of American networks. They were able to ‘weaponize’ the cyber-attack, taking control of infrastructure such as power plants and programming them to fail while causing widespread outages and damage to power grid infrastructures.
There was no longer any reason to need America anymore, now that there was no money to be made from the previously symbiotic relationship. China and Russia were best served by destroying America and the petrodollar, carving out their own spheres of influence in the new world order.
Three months after the terrorist attack and the beginning of the run on the banks, China simply took down the North American power grid.
It was not a permanent or total attack, but it did enough damage and would be time consuming to repair, given that most of the replacement equipment would have to be shipped in from abroad where it was manufactured, mostly in China. This resulted in massive infrastructure failure with essential commodities such as food and fuel unable to be distributed.
When the shortages hit the stores, combined with the inability of the Regime to distribute and honor electronic benefit checks to the entitlement classes, the effect was massive civil disorder and rioting, on a scale that the Regime could not fully control. The collapse was self-promulgating; it was not easy to fix once the dominos started falling.
The main rioting took place in the urban centers where the mass of entitlement dependents resided. The Regime was brutal in its crackdown on its ‘children’. Millions perished from a combination of lawless violence, the brutality of the Regime’s response, disease and starvation.
The Regime wrested control back in the main urban centers across the country. By executive order exception was written to Posse Comitatus, invoking the Insurrection Act, thus declaring Martial law. The Regime commenced to consolidate its power. Given the general food shortage, it aided the Regime that they controlled the food reserves, and according to the ‘dictate’ of the executive orders and the NDAA, Federal agencies such as FEMA and the DHS were able to commandeer private and commercial food reserves.
Many citizens ‘bugged out’ of the urban centers into the countryside to escape the violence, and thus out of the immediate control of the Regime, which precipitated another crisis of refugees and transit gridlock by those unprepared and bugging out to ‘nowhere’.
Out of the ashes of this disaster, the Regime was able to rise. Federal safe zones were created under martial law, along with FEMA camps where food rations were distributed. While the grid was being rebuilt, the FEMA offices and camps ran on emergency generators to support the registration and tracking process.
Outside of those zones were the contested areas where military operations were conducted to subdue the population. The Regime concentrated on controlling these main zones as well as mobility corridors connecting them.
Outside of the zones, the country was divided into sectors of martial law, each sector the responsibility of a military governor backed by a political commissioner from the Regime. The Department of Homeland Security was responsible for domestic military operations. National Guard and active duty units were allocated to the DHS as necessary.
FEMA also made use of the FEMA Homeland Corps. This was primarily a youth organization of armed paramilitaries, formed before the collapse, which was trained and indoctrinated by the Regime and given paramilitary police powers. They were not old enough to understand the real history of the United States beyond the propaganda taught in the school system and they had no familiarity with the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.