[Mb-civic] Off their guard

[Jef Bek]

September 1st, 2005 6:07 pm

Off their guard

The Gulf Coast disaster is further taxing the National Guard, already
stretched to a breaking point in Iraq.

By Mark Benjamin / Salon

Sept. 1, 2005 | On Aug. 1, a spokesman for the Louisiana National Guard
lamented to a local reporter that the state might be stretched for security
personnel in the event of a big hurricane. Dozens of high-water vehicles,
generators and Humvees were employed in Iraq, along with 3,000 Louisiana
National Guard troops.

"The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland
security mission," the Louisiana National Guard's Lt. Col. Pete Schneider
told a reporter from WGNO, the ABC affiliate in New Orleans. Schneider said
that in the event of a hurricane, Louisiana would need help from neighboring
states. 

Amid the Gulf Coast rubble and looting, it appears Schneider may have been
right. "Missing personnel is the big thing in this particular event -- we
need our people," Lt. Andy Thaggard, a Mississippi National Guard spokesman
told the Washington Post Wednesday. Mississippi has 4,000 National Guard
troops in Iraq. 

Military experts have long said that repeated, lengthy deployments to Iraq
are decimating the National Guard. Dispirited veterans are leaving the Guard
in droves and recruiting has plummeted.

However, on Wednesday, the National Guard Bureau responded that it had more
than enough troops to go around. Currently, 8,200 National Guard troops are
responding to the disaster in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
While those states all have units deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, the
National Guard said that it has not yet deployed all of its reserves to the
Gulf Coast. 

In addition to nearly 3,800 Louisiana National Guard troops already at work
on relief efforts, the state has another 2,700 troops on hand. "Louisiana
has 6,500 guard members available," said bureau spokesman Lt. Col. Mike
Milord. "They have only used up about half of their force available."
Mississippi still has another 5,000 troops in reserve, Milord said. "There
are still forces in each state for the state to draw on," Milord said. He
said the Gulf Coast states could also ask other, less affected states for
help too. 

In fact, late Wednesday, the Pentagon announced that 10,000 troops from 13
states outside the area would be divided between the hard-hit areas in
Mississippi and Louisiana. And the Department of Defense announced it would
send help from the active-duty military, including helicopters, a mobile
hospital and Navy ships.

But the hurricane may very well launch new discussions about how far the
country can stretch the National Guard, as it does double duty fighting
terrorists and responding to forest fires and killer storms. (All of the
Alabama National Guard units responding to Katrina have already served in
Iraq, according to the Washington Post.)

National Guard units are the descendants of militias from the 13 original
colonies. As opposed to active-duty soldiers, state National Guard units
report to their governors during peacetime assignments -- such as responding
to hurricanes. Soldiers hold regular civilian jobs and train mostly on
weekends. When units are activated by the federal government for war, the
president has ultimate authority.

The National Guard fought in the first Gulf War, but Iraq is the first
wide-scale and long-term deployment of the National Guard in a foreign war
since the Korean War. More than 250,000 National Guard troops have been
mobilized for active duty since Sept. 11, 2001. Nearly 40,000 members of the
Army and Air National Guard have served more than one duty in Iraq or
Afghanistan. Today, 146,000 National Guard troops are mobilized for war
efforts, according to the Department of Defense.

The pace has been brutal for soldiers who thought they were more likely to
chase looters in New Orleans after a hurricane than watch out for roadside
bombs during a year in Iraq. "Very possibly, the major casualty of this war
is going to be the National Guard," said University of Maryland military
sociology professor David R. Segal. "They have pretty much used up their
combat-ready brigades."

The deployments have been increasingly worrisome to governors who rely on
National Guard troops to respond to natural disasters at home. Governors
shared their trepidation in a July meeting of the National Governors
Association in Des Moines. Idaho Republican Gov. Dirk Kempthorne told the
Associated Press that National Guard troops had been so taxed overseas that
he feared they would not be available when needed at home. "You haven't seen
these kinds of participation from the states since the Civil War," he said.

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense information Web site,
said it is too early to tell if there will be enough National Guard troops
in the area to respond to Katrina. But he hopes that it will spark a debate
about how to fix the National Guard. "I don't know if they are actually
going to turn out to be short-handed" along the Gulf Coast, Pike said. "I
would imagine that there are governors who are watching their state armies
dissolve on them. I think it is going to flow up the food chain that we have
a problem that has got to be fixed."