And why is this necessary? Primarily "to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack." Of course, to call the Muslim community in America to account and compel it to stop teaching Sharia supremacism and hatred of Jews and Christians -- that would be "bigoted." Of course, to halt Muslim immigration in light of the impossibility of distinguishing peaceful Muslims from actual and potential jihadists -- that would be racist. Of course, even to institute some kind of screening of Muslims who enter the country in order to determine their adherence to Sharia principles and to make agitation for Islamic law (stonings, amputations, no free speech, no freedom of conscience, etc.) in this country grounds for deportation -- that would be "Islamophobic."

So if we can't do all that or even anything close to those things, what is left? What can we do? Why, become a Police State, with armed troops roaming the streets. After all, the next terror threat could just as easily come from the local Methodist church as from the local mosque. Better have that Wesleyan Center adequately covered.

"Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security," by Spencer S. Hsu and Ann Scott Tyson for the Washington Post, December 1 (thanks to Anne Crockett):

The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.

The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.

There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement.

But the Bush administration and some in Congress have pushed for a heightened homeland military role since the middle of this decade, saying the greatest domestic threat is terrorists exploiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, dedicating 20,000 troops to domestic response -- a nearly sevenfold increase in five years -- "would have been extraordinary to the point of unbelievable," Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, said in remarks last month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But the realization that civilian authorities may be overwhelmed in a catastrophe prompted "a fundamental change in military culture," he said....