Dick Cheney, George Bush and Nancy Pelosi, January, 2007	Lt. General H. Steven Blum, Chief of the U.S. National Guard

This morning NPR broadcast their interview of Ohio Governor Ted Strickland regarding the news that the Ohio National Guard will be deployed again to Iraq. They are numbered among 13,000 members of the National Guard being called to war from the heartland of the United States. The men and women of the National Guard from Ohio, Arkansas, Indiana and Oklahoma are being ordered by the Bush regime to return to Iraq again for an unprecedented second tour. It is unclear whether or not they are part of the “surge” of up to 48,000 additional troops -double the 21,000 troops first announced by the Bush regime - for the new “surge” against the people of Iraq. Many view the “surge” as a U.S. act of desperation to try to save their crumbling occupation of that country. Most of these men and women have already spent 18 months away from their jobs and families.

Stamina, Equipment and Morale of the National Guard in Question

This morning, Governor Strickland told NPR that he was “concerned about these men and women of the Ohio National Guard, their families and their employers”. He implied that he is concerned about fatigue and morale among these troops having had inadequate training and time to recover from previous deployments. Strickland said these members of the Ohio National Guard had been told by the federal government that they would not be re-deployed to Iraq until 2009. He stated:

“This is an example of the government not keeping faith with the men and women who are serving.”

Strickland said he has concerns about their possible lack of training, protection and weapons and their inadequate time for rest between deployments. He said he would be meeting with President Bush “to express his concerns”. Regarding this re-cycling of National Guard from Oklahoma, Governor Brad Henry has “implied that it’s a sneaky back-door draft", according to a related NPR report and Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe stated that it would be “stretching our citizen-soldiers thin”.  Their current re-deployment is a violation of U.S. policy on the use of the National Guard. Pentagon rules state that the National Guard can only be deployed once in 5 years. But the 4 NG units now being sent back into war in Iraq have been deployed in the last 3 years.

U.S. National Guard in Iraq since 2003

There is nothing new about current NG re-deployment to the war in Iraq. National Guard units from all 50 states were sent to Iraq in September, 2003, just 6 months after the invasion and they've been there ever since. In 2005 Minnesota National Guard Commander General Larry Shellito described the NG deployment as the state's largest troop deployment since World War II. More than 2,000 Minnesota "citizen soldiers" were sent to the Persian Gulf in 2005-2006 with most headed for Iraq. Previously, more than 3,200 Minnesota Army National Guard soldiers had been sent into war with almost 2/3rds of the troops ending up in Iraq.

National Guard Diverted from Domestic Service to Patch the Torn Quilt of the U.S. Military

The total active duty U.S. Army numbers about 500,000 and the Bush regime wants to increase that number by an additional 70,000 over the next 10 years. Bush wants to keep 160,000 troops in Iraq “for the foreseeable future” – which is beyond the capability of the Army at this time. In the meantime, when a volunteer army is increasingly difficult to recruit, the National Guard is being called upon – against Pentagon rules – to fill in as a stopgap. Today’s National Guard is trained to fight forest fires, provide hurricane relief, riot control and search and rescue. About half of the National Guard has now been sent into war and occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq.

On March 28, 2007, Lt. General H. Steven Blum told members of the House armed services committee on readiness that the Army National Guard units inside the U.S. "have, on average, just 40% of their required equipment on hand". He warned that they "have less than half the equipment they need to deal with natural disasters, terrorist attacks and other threats at home". According to the Washington Post, he warned that this "deficit cuts into the Guard's ability to respond to national emergencies and keep members of the Guard adequately trained for rapid deployment" He testified that, "To respond here at home, you have to have people fully manned, fully trained and fully equipped" and that "If we don't have the equipment we need, the reaction time is slow, and time equals lives lost. Those lives are American lives." He said it would cost taxpayers an additional $40 billion to bring Guard forces up to "an acceptable level of operational readiness."

A Dark History of the U.S. National Guard

The U.S. National Guard is often lauded in the corporate-government media for benevolent domestic service in times of natural disasters like floods and hurricanes. However, it has a dark history in the annals of wars abroad, suppression of U.S. anti-war movements and organized labor in the U.S. The current recycling of NG members from 4 states is the largest deployment of the U.S. National Guard since the Vietnam War. The NG website states,

“During the Vietnam war, almost 23,000 Army and Air Guardsmen were called up for a year of active duty; some 8,700 were deployed to Vietnam. Over 75,000 Army and Air Guardsmen were called upon to help bring a swift end to Desert Storm in 1991.”

It was the Ohio National Guard that was responsible for the “May 4 massacre” or “Kent State massacre” when they fired upon unarmed students at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. They killed four students and wounded nine. The students were protesting the invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War after then President Nixon attacked Cambodia and announced it five days later. Eight million students responded in a student strike at hundreds of universities, colleges, high schools and middle schools in opposition to the killings at home and the U.S. slaughter in Vietnam and Cambodia.

The National Guard began as State Militias over 370 years ago. The Militias were used to colonize the Americas, fight the British and French and defeat the Native Americans who were defending their lands. For example, on December 13, 1636, the Massachusetts Bay Colony organized three regiments of militia to fight the Pequot Indians. In the Pequot War the Militias committed genocide on the Pequot Nation, completely wiping them out. They Pequot no longer exist.

The State Militias, morphed into the National Guard, also fulfilled the role of suppressing organized labor and has had a long history of beating, imprisoning and killing workers into submission when they organized for higher wages and better working conditions. The Guard fulfilled this role throughout the history of the development of organized labor in the United States. 

Still in the Business of War but Things are Falling Apart

Today, the National Guard is still in the business of genocide and colonization. When the U.S. military has been stretched like a rubber band to the point of breaking, illegal re-deployments are ripping families apart to continue the Guard’s dishonorable work of war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States government is in crisis – politically, organizationally, economically and militarily – perhaps moreso than anytime in it’s relatively brief history. Things are falling apart for the U.S.-led empire due to four phenomena:

1. It’s economy is based upon unlimited growth on a finite planet, dependent upon the natural resources and expanded markets of other nations via the auspices of the WTO, World Bank and IMF.
   
   
2. The rising up of the people against corrupt, puppet governments in places like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, UAE, Mexico, and Colombia – all set up around the world by the United States under rubrics like “fighting terrorism”, “regime change”, “nation building”, “democratization” and “liberation”.
   
   
3. The success of the heroic resistance fighters in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine who are defending their national sovereignty against the international invader, occupier, killer and thief. The Rumsfeldian strategy of hi-tech invasion miscalculated the tactical force of guerrilla warfare combined with the spirit of sacrifice, survival and triumph.
   
   
4. The rising up of the people of Latin America; their rejection of U.S. neo-liberal policies and exploitation of their economies and natural resources; their successful development of institutions like Banca del Sur, Telesur and ALBA; and the new unification of Latin America in the national interests of member states.   

Among the many things that can be said of the age of capitalism one must be admitted by everyone: It has been a resilient economic system that has reinvented itself over and over. The illusion of invincibility has emerged from its resilience, leaving many people with a sense of futility and helplessness. However the capitalist dependency upon unlimited growth, the temporal use of minority regimes in client states and the peoples' will to overcome - all merge into a recipe for the the empire's long decline.

The New Dawn

The current, desperate re-deployment of the men and women of the National Guard to Iraq is a poignant example of the fissures and crises now in full display inside the U.S. government and military.  We see the demise in the failed war and occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, in the ongoing struggle of the indomitable Palestinians and in the defeat of U.S. neoliberal policies and capitalist globalization in Latin America and other parts of the world. We fight for and watch the beginning of the end of the Global Corporate Empire. We see in its stead, the advent of the New Socialism of the 21st Century, bred and born in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and thriving globally in the New World Revolution.

© Copyright 2007 by AxisofLogic.com

Bio and more essays and poetry by Les Blough