Originally Posted by
Crepitus
First of all I would like to point out the discussion title is "will martial law be introduced to the US" not "can martial law be introduced to the US". I never stated it couldn't happen, I said it wouldn't happen which is an important distinction.
The next point, would citizen rise up if martial law were declared? I don't know. I would like to think so.
But consider this: The US armed forces consists of about 1.5 million persons. There are over 300 million people in the US. Balance of force looks pretty adverse doesn't it? But that's not all! We aren't considering the "tooth to tail" ratio. That is, How many of those 1.5 million soldiers is actually a spear carrier. The best numbers I can find for that are from 2014 and say it comes in at 17% and that means there are actually only about 250,000 actual fighters in the armed forces. But it gets worse! A certain percentage of those are deployed somewhere out of the country. I can't find any solid numbers but it's gotta be a couple hundred thousand at least, and 17% are fighters who are not here. That's 250,000 - 34,000 = 216,000 left here in the US to take over an entire country. Doesn't look good does it?
Next thing is, would all of them obey their orders? I posted a poll for our members so we will see, but I doubt all of them would so that cuts the numbers down even more. For arguments sake lets say that only 10% refuse to participate. 216,000 - 10% or 21,600 leaves 194,400 against a nation 300 million. That's 1 military fighting man per 1550 citizens. I don't care how many force multipliers you've got, there just aren't enough people! Everyone wouldn't have to fight back, just .3% puts it at 1,000,000 to less than 200,000. They'd be crazy to try.
The NDAA thing is a tough one. Not being a lawyer I can't really tell you all the implications of that, but considering the only people I see kicking up a fuss about it are extreme right wing "news" sites I'd have to say that it's a matter of interpretation, which means it's an opinion and not a fact. In fact the president has stated it will not be used against american citizens.
I believe that American exceptionalism is alive and well. The people are wising up to some of the things that have been going on and starting to force some changes. The NSA is being brought to heel and there are now restrictions on passing military equipment to domestic police. We are awake and we are fixing this.
The national defense resources preparedness act signed in march of 2012 is nothing more than a restatement of policy that has been in place for decades and grants no authority to the President or the Cabinet that they don't already have under existing law.
Congress did approve the Iran nuclear deal. No "abuse of executive power" occurred.
In short, while it is very remotely possible that a crazed executive could attempt to declare martial law, in the unlikely event he or she could get it past congress it would fail miserably.