Thread: National Guard role: Gulf, Arizona, Afghan?

National Guard role: Gulf, Ariz., Afghan?

Plain Talk By Al Neuharth, USA TODAY Founder

President Obama's decision to send National Guard troops to Louisiana and the Gulf Coast to help clean up the oil mess there and to Arizona to help guard our border against illegal immigrants from Mexico are two of the best military decisions he has made. He's just not sending enough to either place.

The National Guard men and women he is committing to those two states represent a tiny fraction of those who are miscommitted in two countries abroad.

We now have approximately 470,000 men and women serving in the National Guard. Here's where those on active duty are:

•56,500 in Afghanistan and Iraq.

•17,500 authorized to help clean up Louisiana, but only 1,400 there so far.

•1,200 scheduled for border help in Arizona.

The image most of us have had traditionally of the National Guard is that its job is to guard us here at home and help out in emergencies. Instead, it has become a tool of presidents who want to do nation-building abroad.

President Bush, terribly misguided and often misled by Vice President Cheney, leaned heavily on the Guard for his tragic misadventure in Iraq.

Now, Obama is doubling down in Afghanistan. Suggesting that we can avoid another 9/11 by having the National Guard keep the Taliban from growing poppies for opium in Afghanistan is utter nonsense.

Afghanistan is Obama's war now. Unless he gets our troops there back home soon, it could cost him this 2012 re-election.

If National Guard men and women were deployed at our major airports and seaports — and at some key international sites — to help keep away foreigners who want to do us harm, the results would be much better. Also, the cost would be much lower — in lives and dollars.

I voted for Obama for president. But.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/fo ... 4_ST_N.htm

Great article, great point. The US National Guard is to guard and protect our homeland, not Afghanistan.

IT IS NOT the National Guard any more. It is now to be known as

The "INTERNATIONAL GUARD"

The globalists just forgot to tell us.