On Good Friday, 2007, which was April 6, the Pentagon leaked the information that 12,000 National Guardsmen would be activated and called to service starting early next year. They will be sent to Iraq and will serve at least one year there.*
There are some significant thoughts about this development. This will be an involuntary call-up of the National Guard. Several of these National Guardsmen had done a tour of Iraq previously. Traditionally, the agreement between the National Guard and the Pentagon has been that there would be a five-year interval between call-ups for service in Iraq. Obviously this call-up is much less than five years. In many respects, this is a back-door draft because the National Guard was not created for the purpose of fighting foreign wars. The Guard was created for handling such things as floods, fires, and riots on the home front. But because the American Army has been depleted by its losses and its recruiting failures, the National Guard is carrying more than 35% of the load in Iraq.
In effect, by calling on the National Guard to do combat service in Iraq, the Army is once again admitting its own failures and the fact that the Pentagon has not dealt honestly with the American public or with its fighting forces. Many of the National Guard members who are being called for duty in 2008 in Iraq have already done a tour there. They know how dangerous it is going to be, regardless of what Senator McCain may claim.
What I am getting to is the fact that the next eight months before the call-up will cause the Guard members to have an inordinate tenseness as they try to perform their civilian duties. Every American should be aware that a man called for combat service in Iraq could be separated from his senses by a roadside bomb. Every member of the National Guard units which are to be activated and called to service, must look at his wife and his children and know that she could well become a widow and the children could become fatherless in the following year.
The National Guard units are most often comprised of men who are beyond their teen-age years. When they joined the Guard, it was with the understanding that they would drill one weekend per month and would spend two weeks during the year in some sort of training. After -service in the Guard for 20 years, a pension of some sort would be available. And so the enlistees in the National Guard range in age from age 20 to age 55. These men have more experience and know the dangers of war. It would seem to me that those Guard members and their families for the next eight months would be under a period of heavy tension and stress. In this situation, it is not difficult to imagine that the divorce rate and stress related illnesses will increase.
What this tells the world is that the Bush administration has no intention of winding this war down and finding an exit strategy. The Chief Decider of the United States is going to throw everything into the balance in the hope that he can win an unwinnable war. The facts on the ground are that the American military cannot prevail. This is a war that should never, never have started. And now that the war is in its fifth year, the Chief Decider has concluded that more troops might affect the balance. I am afraid that is not to be. More troops, including the National Guardsmen who are being called up, will mean more deaths. The American government is being profligate with its soldiers in the forlorn hope that victory or a stalemate can be achieved. At the end of the line, victory will not be achieved. We are occupiers of the Iraqi territory and in the end, occupiers are always defeated.
As the last resort of scoundrels, Bush has now told the American people that, unless Congress gives him his $100 billion package to support the troops, tours will be extended and there will be early call-ups. The Commander-in-Chief is saying clearly that, “If I do not get my way, your loved ones in the armed forces are going to be away for a long period of time.” The attack on Congress is indeed the last resort of scoundrels.
If you run across some of the National Guard troops who will be activated and called to duty early in 2008, I hope you will appreciate their sense of tension and stress. For their wives to become widows and their children to become fatherless is an unconscionable crime. It is unconscionable because this is an unjust war started at the whim of the Great Decider and one that has now gotten much beyond his control. This is a gloomy assessment but I believe the facts will fully back my contentions. The lives of American soldiers are being wasted in Iraq in a profligate manner and our fortunes are being thrown away at the rate of billions per week. Until Congress cuts off the funding for this war, the killings will go on. And at this time, very few in the Congress seems to have the courage to cut off the funding. And so the war goes on to the great discredit of the United States.
E. E. CARR
April 13, 2007
Essay 248
*Postscript: Since the foregoing essay was dictated, the Commander in Chief has announced that all tours in Iraq have been increased by three months. This means that the call-up, originally scheduled for a year, will now be fifteen months at the minimum. It is a tragedy beyond description to know that many will die, both American and Iraqi, in the extended call-up. This war must come to an end and it is becoming clear that cutting off the funding is the only way to accomplish that end. This country is looking for several brave women and men to step forward and tell the Great Decider that his personal war is over and he should pick up his marbles and head for Crawford, Texas.
EEC
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Kevin’s commentary: Well, we have an organization called the National Guard. Let’s break that name down a little bit. If I told you to guard my garage, you would probably understand that command to mean “stay near my garage and don’t let anyone else mess it up.” You probably would not take that to mean “leave my garage to go slash the tires of neighbors who you’re not a fan of” but that is basically what the National Guard was being asked to go do.
That said, I think the surge actually wound up being relatively effective at suppressing violence in the region. I hope in the end that was worth it.