By Allan Wall
07/19/2024
[Allan Wall’s National Guard unit was deployed to Iraq in 2004-2005 — see Memo From The Middle East | Bush Puts Troops On The Border! [In Iraq]]
The outgoing National Guard chief is whining about the National Guard doing duty on the U.S. border. From Military.com:
The outgoing chief of the National Guard is doubling down on his recent criticisms of the service component’s long-troubled security mission on the U.S.-Mexico border, saying it’s a detriment to the Guard’s ability to wage war. “The reason the Guard exists is to fight and win our nation’s wars, period,” Gen. Daniel Hokanson, the National Guard’s top officer, said in an interview with Military.com on Wednesday. “We can do stuff along the southwest border. But at the end of the day, that is [demands] on individuals not related to their military mission set.”
’At What Cost’: Guard Chief Argues Border Mission Is Getting in the Way of Warfighting, by Steve Beynon, Military.com, July 18th, 2024
On the contrary sir, there is no mission more important than guarding the border. If we can’t do that, nothing else matters.
For decades, the National Guard has had some level of presence on the southwest border. But that mission was supercharged in Texas as part of Gov. Greg Abbott’s ongoing Operation Lone Star, which surged that state’s soldiers to combat illegal immigration in 2021. At its peak, 10,000 Guardsmen were part of the operation, which is in addition to a federal border mission of some 2,500 Guardsmen.
We ought to put tens of thousands more Guardsmen on the border. Give them a clear mission, rules of engagement, and the resources they need.
Hokanson’s comments come after remarks to lawmakers on Capitol Hill in June in which he highlighted his concerns with the mission interfering with the Guard’s training requirements — already a significant obligation for units made up of mostly part-timers who have to maintain the same qualifications as their active-duty counterparts.
”The mission interfering with the Guard’s training requirements”? Really? Once again, there’s no military mission more important than guarding the border.
”There is no military training value for what we do,” he told lawmakers, referencing border missions and adding that the Guard’s time would be better spent preparing for war and being available to respond to state emergencies.
For Hokanson, the issue is twofold. A border mission, even a shorter one that can span about a month, consumes a significant chunk of a part-time Guardsman’s duty time in a given year. The border mission is mostly static security and surveillance, but troops typically are not allowed to interact directly with migrants or suspected smugglers. He also argues it adds yet another strain on the relationship between Guardsmen and their lives back home.
”If you’re deployed down on the southwest border, to your family or your employer, it’s the same as you being in Kuwait, or Iraq, or somewhere else overseas, because you’re away from your family or away from your employer,” Hokanson said.
But equally important, he stressed, is that the sprawling border mission is just another thing on troops’ plates as they’re being overworked, a significant concern across the military’s senior leadership. Service members are away from home more now than during the peak of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This guy is a whiner.
Trump, if elected, needs to not listen to whining generals and tell them to do their job or resign.
The high cadence of missions and long-term training events is worsened by the service’s being spread thin bolstering NATO’s front line amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, deterring Beijing’s expansionist goals in the Pacific, and running missions that are the remnants of the Global War on Terror in Africa and the Middle East — with the National Guard making up the bulk of the combat power in those legacy missions.
Well, maybe we need to rethink some of those missions, none of which are as important as protecting our border.
At any given time, some 20,000 Guardsmen are deployed abroad, according to service component data.
OK, quit deploying them abroad and deploy them on the border!
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