That’d be a three-hour drive each way, even without the area’s legendary traffic jams. Doable, but brutal, I would imagine.
There’s lots of open space at this federal property in Westwood.
The Dodgers are owned by an investment group that includes Magic Johnson and Billie Jean King. The chief of the investment group, Mark Walter, is a long time big donor to the Democratic Party.
8-hours on duty and then a six hour round-trip commute. That would suck. If they are 12-hours on duty it doesn’t bear thinking about.
Right behind the Federal building they will likely be deployed at is a huge federal detention facility with beds, food, and an exercise yard.
As it now stands, is it empty?
All they have to do is ship off 700 current detainees to a gulag in El Salvador.
Just speculating, but might someone be thinking it’s a good idea to have these troops just s bit angry and ready to take it out on whoever’s close to hand?
Long commutes are common for Southern California residents, are they not?
with the impulsive, lack of planning that went into this, can you imagine what a “surprise” invasion into Canada/Greenland/Panama would look like? I pity military leaders having to anticipate last-minute engagements at any time
Competent militaries, of course, have general-purpose plans for short-notice deployments, with a lot of the preparations already being made without knowing in advance where they’ll deploy to.
Madness is definitely involved. Probably not on the part of the individual troops; though I suspect that in the other sense of the word they’re at least somewhat annoyed.
I suspect there’s a couple different definitions of short-notice in play here…
- Start preparations immediately to leave tomorrow
- Leave immediately
Sounds like the order was a whole lot more like #2 than #1
“Ours is not to question why; ours is but to sleep on the floor in the basement.”
That’s a Marine Corps base. The National Guard is not from there.
The US does have the ability to deploy troops very quickly.
I’d think since the National Guard is often called on to deal with rapidly developing situations (riots or natural disasters) that they would have the capability to deploy very quickly. Even if some initial troops are sent immediately with only their gun and a little ammo a support force would not be too far behind.
I worry at the lack of competence displayed here. Russia turned out to be a paper tiger. Is the US too?
Is there a rule against letting the National Guard camp on a Marine base for a week or two? All the same team in the end.
I suspect that the Marines would not welcome what they probably see as incompetent amateurs.
There’s always the Queen Mary in Long Beach.
A large tent city in municipal parkland… what sort of social situation does that bring to mind?
This is also what I was wondering - whatever the situation, how do they plan on moving these troops? I assume they didn’t bring their own cars (although they are National Guard - weekend warriors?) If they are distributed around the city, the logisitics would be mind-boggling. No matter where they are, 2700 people at, say, 50 to a bus (with full kit) would be over 50 busses - or twice as many trucks… Missing from all this, too, is logistics like who goes to get gas, where, and who’s credit card? What if someone figures out their route and creates traffic jams?
Does the average National Guard unit have someone who arranges this sort of logistics, or is that up to the governor’s office, usually?
I was commenting on the post that said the National Guard came from there. Not that they couldn’t use the facilities. They can’t use the facilities because it would be really dumb to have them based that far away. Camp Pendleton is 90 miles away, but that’s really too far also. I’m sure there are some National Guard armories that are much closer that won’t fit 2000 but you can fit several hundred. All they would need is a cot and room to put it in.