A Stretched National Guard?

By Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu
FrontPageMagazine.com
May 24, 2006

The military's most vociferous critics, including those railing against President Bush’s proposal to deploy a limited number of National Guard forces to the southern border, are too often people who haven’t a clue about that which they speak. They disguise contempt for the military – active, reserve, or Guard – behind crocodile tears of concern about the combat losses, overseas deployments, family separations, and physical and mental hardships our all-volunteer forces endure. Editorial writers and talking heads bemoan any additional mission requirements whining that the Guard is “stretched too thin.” Politicians who voted against military budgets for years now whine about “mission creep” and “operational overload.”

Is the National Guard capable of adding border protection to the kinds of international missions that have been levied upon it? Typical of critics is California Democrat State Senator Don Perata of Oakland, who considers deployment of the Guard along California’s southern border an “inappropriate use.” He threatens to put a hold on next year’s funding, saying, “I do not want to spend any money at all, invest a dime, into anything that weakens our ability to respond to a state disaster when it comes.”

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seemed to agree. The Governator glumly agreed that troops might provide “short-term relief,” but he also did not believe border protection was an appropriate role for the National Guard. Schwarzenegger wants to hold back the troops in case of need from natural disasters – earthquake and fire come first to mind - or in response to other emergencies. This assumes, of course, that the tens of thousands of Mexicans and Central Americans weekly streaming northward to join millions of their fellows already in the Golden State do not already compose a sufficiently threatening “state disaster.”