One of the main roles of the National Guard (when they aren’t suppressing non-existent riots) is disaster response where may have to deploy into a devastated area with minimal logistical support and non-working infrastructure to support a population of people fleeing devastation with no resources. A deploying National Guard unit should be able to provide for all of its basic support needs for a short deployment including transpo, comms, generator power, fuel, food and potable water, basic medical support, et cetera, and call upon its associated detachments for more extended logistics and support. It is not, as apparently believed by many posters, just guys in pup tents aimlessly milling around. But all of that requires planning, space, and time to establish, and nothing about this activation gives any indication that anyone who understood this made any kind of plan other than send in the Guard and see what shit gets stirred up because that is the actual plan.
This is what amazes me. I’d think everything you mentioned is National Guard-101. This is what they do and, presumably, have prepared for (they have all the stuff they need on their base) and practiced over and over again. And yet they missed this most basic part of their function? I dunno who is in command but someone needs a good talking to I think.
Yep, Newsom and the LA Mayor are both in opposition to this.
Guard troops are not necessarily trained in crowd control. I think the police would/could handle a peaceful protest.
This is a hot button issue, so I suppose it could get out of hand. Military is just ridiculous over kill () in this instance.
Trump is/was trying to “wag the dog” to change the news reports. The Elon feud was embarrassing him.
That’s not their main function. The main function of the National Guard is to be the combat arms reserve force. They train for war. If they were supposed to be just sand baggers then they wouldn’t be in infantry, armor and artillery units. Combat operations are what is practiced most of the time. Maybe one drill a year is dedicated to civil defense. Maybe. And individual units don’t have bases. They have armories that have minimal logistical support. Much of what they would need is stored at central locations which in a huge state like California could be very far away.
Call ups usually take a few days in order to get logistics in place. That logistical framework does exist. There are full time soldiers that are there when a call up happens. In this case I have no idea how they did the call up since it bypassed the usual structure. I don’t know if they just grabbed random bodies or if the support units are intact.
As for having no place to sleep, it kind of comes with the territory. It’s great if you can have a bed and three squares a day but sometimes you get a piece of floor and a MRE. After Sandy I spent 3 weeks in an armory with no heat, hot water or electricity living off MREs. I did have a cot so that was nice.
According to The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, it was also to ensure that pictures of Trump falling while trying to climb the stairs to AF1 did not get airtime; unlike Biden (or Ford, or GWB), I bet most people saw nothing of Trump falling.
I wonder if the other Guard units were told by the governor not to support, but to “go home and shut off your phones”.
It is their main function. Maybe on paper, long ago, they were conceived as a reserve force but, far and away today, they are deployed domestically during natural disasters and civil unrest. Yes, they were in Iraq and Afghanistan but they are primarily in support roles. We have Marines and the Army and the Air Force and Navy for a reason. They do most of the fighting. Not the National Guard. If we get down to the National Guard defending the US something has gone terribly wrong.
That they train as a military force does not change any of that.
And I think the National Guard base in California is in Sacramento. They may well have armories scattered about (probably do…seems common for any National Guard).
I’m actually shocked by this. It’s like sending troops into combat with no ammunition. The military has ample kit for encampments, but it does take time to request it, draw it, load it, transport it and distribute it. Also, you can’t pitch a tent on a concrete floor. They sent these folks into a potentially hostile situation without any preparation.
I’m not. I have no doubt that Trump said, “I want this done, and I want it done today.” He doesn’t care about logistics; that’s what his fawning peons are for.
Just about always. I believe the only precedent for doing it otherwise was to enforce civil rights legislation in the 1960’s on states that wanted to keep official segregation.
Hungry and thirsty troops sleeping on the floor, eh? Then sent out to guard that building? I say let all the local food trucks come on by and cook-up a storm of great smelling burritos and tacos and other food from the LA culinary scene for the protesters. Let the troops smell that for a while and let it sink in! No need for violence - just use the persuasive power of aroma.
I spent 23 of my 27 years in the military in the National Guard. I’m very well acquainted with the mission and training. Every state has national guard units whose home station is an armory. That’s how it’s structured. There are training bases that are usually geared towards individual training. Most large scale training is conducted on active duty posts although there are some bigger training areas like Fort Indiantown Gap PA . The focus of the National Guard is war fighting whether you like it or not. There is something called METL which each unit has. It is a list of mission essential tasks that the unit has to train and be proficient on. Civil defense may be shoehorned in. There were many years when we did no training on it.
We had an armory in Santa Barbara until not too long ago. The weekend stuff would be there. For the two week stint once a year they’d drive up to Fort Ord in Monterey about 220 miles up the coast.
) in this instance.