The National Guard - Failure of the Governors

The Administration and the media tell us that the National Guard is broken. Two-thirds of its brigades are not fit for combat and its equipment is broken or left behind in Iraq. The National Guard is each state’s first line of defense for homeland security. Is the National Guard better deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan where they are subject to attacks from all sides than at home performing their proper homeland security duties? The aftermath of hurricane Katrina demonstrates that deploying the National Guard in Iraq has spread America's citizen-soldiers too thin and endangered the nation by leaving us unprepared to react to disaster or emergency at home.

The members of the National Guard are not professional soldiers. They are community oriented citizen soldiers, whose relationships to their community, their workplace, and their families are damaged by repeated tours of duty. Many professional Guardsmen have suffered severe financial and career losses due to repeated tours in Iraq. Some have lost their homes, their jobs, and their families due to the stress of excessive or prolonged tours of active duty.

The vaunted “All Professional Army” cannot muster sufficient manpower to function independently. We do not have sufficient ground force to fight effectively in Iraq. But the neo-con leaders, with no understanding of combat needs, believed that “going light” would give us the speed and mobility to literally “blitzkrieg” the opposition. They were wrong.

In five years of combat we are still traveling “Death Highway” with utility vehicles tricked out in slap-dash armor and wonder why our road casualties are so high. Apparently these generals never learned the classic definition of insanity, “Doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.”

The trail of broken bodies, broken minds and broken homes - and a total lack of support once they are discharged - is a sorry "thank you" from the United States government to its National Guard members, who should never have been sent to Iraq at all. It is the responsibility of the Governors of each state to demand better treatment - or better, insist on bringing them home.