With Mumbai attacks fresh on everyones mind and, if anything positive can be made of it, maybe it will be a jarring eye opener of just what is at stake with the war on the West. But one constant theme has been played through it all from the Bush administration and that theme has been a very proactive, security first, bad guys last, approach to national security.

The Defense Department announced that 20,000 uniformed U.S. military troops will be trained and operating in the United States by 2011 to assist local authorities against possible terrorist attacks and other catastrophes. This is a measure that the President Bush as been pushing for a few years now.

The Pentagon’s plan calls for three rapid-reaction forces to be ready for emergency response by September 2011. The first 4,700-person unit, built around an active-duty combat brigade based at Fort Stewart, Ga., was available as of Oct. 1, said Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., commander of the U.S. Northern Command.

The concern is that civilian authorities may not be able to adequately respond to nuclear/chemical catastrophes or a coordinated assault using advanced and high-powered weaponry. The carnage that unfolded before our teary eyes in India amplifies those concerns. There are just too many that refuse to acknowledge the seriousness and the deadliness of the war against civilizations. These weaklings on the left want to reason, share the blame, and excuse the murderous acts and ignore the climbing body count of innocent non-muslims.

The critics of the bill, mainly ACLU, cite issues with the protective measure that the President is putting into place. They say it undermines the the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law that restricts the military’s role in domestic law enforcement.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the libertarian Cato Institute are troubled by what they consider an expansion of executive authority.

Domestic emergency deployment may be “just the first example of a series of expansions in presidential and military authority,” or even an increase in domestic surveillance, said Anna Christensen of the ACLU’s National Security Project. And Cato Vice President Gene Healy warned of “a creeping militarization” of homeland security.

“There’s a notion that whenever there’s an important problem, that the thing to do is to call in the boys in green,” Healy said, “and that’s at odds with our long-standing tradition of being wary of the use of standing armies to keep the peace.”

McHale stressed that the response units will be subject to the act, that only 8 percent of their personnel will be responsible for security and that their duties will be to protect the force, not other law enforcement. For decades, the military has assigned larger units to respond to civil disturbances, such as during the Los Angeles riot in 1992.

The liberal drivel and cooky paranoia shared by these types really shows their ignorance and refusal to accept the reality that has been dumped in our laps. By assigning an active combat brigade to northern command does not transform our country into a police state. The measure simply calls for a more robust response force to those units already assigned for that duty. It allows the planners and officials of Homeland Security the luxury of having a better capability to get to a situation and supply relief, support and, if need be, an overwhelming force in case of a coordinated attack in one of our U.S. cities.

The country doesn’t have the stomach to watch another Katrina-like disaster unfold. Accept, the next disaster won’t be mother nature’s doing. The threat is real. The bad guys are out there. They aim to target, rape, torture, mangle, kill and control the lives of the West. We need to provide the necessary planning that will prevent any chance of sharing the same fate that unjustly fell on our Indian, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, British, American brother and sisters.

It is past time we come to from out of our stupor. The game is real and they already started playing.