My co-worker, Christopher Lejeune, was interviewed for an article in the Deseret News.
He came away from Iraq feeling like the military effort there had been accomplished and that the rebuilding work, although essential, was not the military’s job. “They need good, clean water, good electricity. But these are not the jobs of tank gunners and Bradley drivers and artillerymen,” he said. U.S. forces, he believes, need to be in Afghanistan.
When I write about events in the Middle East, I’m pretty much mostly concerned about their domestic effect. Were I living in Baghdad, I’m positive my outlook would be different, but I live in Utah. I felt like, although the writer did a fair job representing Chris’s views, the following quote was just left dangling without much explanation:
LeJeune said he would “love to see a withdrawal from Iraq and a real focus on Afghanistan, Pakistan, what have you,” he said. “The forgotten war there is still raging and they don’t have the resources because we’re tied up in Iraq.”
Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida “have gained strength, as we pulled resources from Afghanistan. Not only has this war devastated our national security, but it has devastated the people of Utah.”
How has it devastated the people of Utah?
- 21 servicemen from Utah dead in Iraq
- A thousand Utah National Guardsmen deployed in Iraq. These represent some of our best and brightest young men and women — the intellectual capital of our state, and the future of our democracy — deployed for great lengths of time with very brief stays back home in Utah before being re-deployed.
- Utah Guardsmen are being placed at risk doing jobs they are not trained or equipped to do.
Surprisingly, one of the effects I thought I’d see — a decline in Utah Guard enlistment rates — doesn’t exist. To their credit, most Utahns, particularly those in Utah’s majority religion, have a strong patriotic streak which is reflected in Guard enlistment numbers.
My greatest concern regarding this use of the National Guard is due to the Total Force Act of 1973, stipulating that the National Guard was to be treated as an extension of the federal US military. Combined with the 1987 Montgomery Amendment to the National Defense Authorization (opposed by all 50 state governors), we’re now in a situation where state governors cannot withhold their National Guard troops from foreign service for any reason, including local disaster, civil unrest, or invasion. The President has used this authority to such an extent that the occupying force in Iraq is — if I understand correctly — principally composed of Guardsmen. This deployment has already had a profound effect on relief efforts in Tornado Alley, resulting in the displacement of and hardships to citizens who could have found emergency relief if their National Guard weren’t already deployed.
I think the 1973 Total Force law is simply a bad law. The Guard is here to defend our country and serve domestically in times of emergency. It serves as a supplement to our standing army.
The Guard should not be our standing army.
I realize I’ve gone a bit off-topic from the interview, but his situation upon returning from his tour reminds me viscerally of what’s currently wrong with our military strategy. After serving abroad, a soldier should be able to enlist in the Guard and look forward to helping out on the domestic front when disaster strikes. He should march in parades, a proud symbol of the strength of our citizen militia. He should supplement our police and search and rescue teams when necessary. He should serve a few weeks a year to keep his training up, and keep physically fit to be ready for the challenges of serving his neighbors. As his neighbor, I willingly supplement his income through my state taxes because he will protect my family when the worst happens.
He should never be deployed abroad unless his specialty is critical to operations and he needs to serve in a very time-limited capacity to train the standing army how to do the job.
I think the combination of amendments and laws, as it stands, allows abuse of state troops by the Federal government, and we’re seeing that abuse now in the constant deployment of our National Guard abroad. This degrades the ability of our citizen soldiers to respond to domestic emergencies and leaves us in a vulnerable position at home and abroad.
Good Job Matt
I would like to post a link to this from vetvoice.com. This is a good explanation of what has happened with the Utah National Guard.
Interesting…
Our current National Guard deployment is record-setting, to be sure. But I think it’s interesting that even with 3000 deployed, the Minnesota National Guard indicated that Iraq Guard deployment had no effect on response to the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge disaster in Minneapolis.
I also think it’s interesting that some citizens think National Guard efforts sufficed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (and the National Guard agrees, saying that enough National Guard responded from around the nation that they had to start turning them away), while others maintain that our National Guard presence was insufficient to the disaster. My opinion there is that, while the response of Guardsmen all over the nation was laudable, lives could have been saved and additional collateral damage avoided if Louisiana would have had all of its own Guardsmen available at the time of the disaster, rather than out-of-state Guard arriving over the course of the next few days.
But we’re a nation still at war, despite how convinced we seem to be that it’s business-as-usual in the stock market and marketplace.
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Matthew P. Barnson