National Guard troops arriving at an Army Reserve center near Chicago. Image: Video screen grab
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Trump has figured out that he doesn’t need the amateurs in the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. He’s got a professional army that is funded with taxpayer dollars at his beck and call.
Military units by their nature are competitive. Each unit has its own esprit de corps associated with its history. The Texas 36th Infantry Division has a distinguished history that goes back to World War II, where it fought in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and the invasion of Eastern France. The 44th Infantry Division of the Illinois National Guard fought in France, Austria and Germany during World War II and was responsible for taking the surrender of Nazi V-2 rocket scientists including Wernher von Braun in 1945. (Von Braun would go onto fame in the U.S. NASA rocket program after the war.)
The real glue that holds National Guard units together is their shared citizenship in the states where they live. A National Guard soldier might have a company commander who taught him biology in high school or baby-sat for her when she was a child. The commander of the 36th Infantry Division in Texas might also employ some of the division’s enlisted soldiers and officers in a company he runs in Dallas, or at an oil field operation he oversees in civilian life. Those who serve in the National Guard are called “citizen soldiers” because of their dual roles in the military and in civil life. Regular army soldiers often refer to National Guard soldiers as “weekend warriors” because they only serve in uniform during training on weekends and usually for several weeks during summers.
An American military unit deployed to a city in another state would not have the problems that U.S. soldiers faced in dealing with local and religious customs in Afghanistan and Iraq during the wars there. The culture gap between U.S. soldiers and civilians from those countries was huge. But even here in the U.S., there are differences between the cultures in states. It’s not a perfect comparison, but think of law enforcement within an American city. Cops assigned to the Bronx in New York face different people on the street than they would in midtown Manhattan or Brooklyn. Each police precinct in a city like New York or Chicago has its own culture and local knowledge. Being reassigned to another precinct in a different part of a major city like Chicago has been compared to policing another country with all the racial and ethnic differences between neighborhoods.
The danger of deploying Texas National Guard soldiers in Illinois has several elements. One, they are not from the state where they are serving and are unfamiliar with everything from the local landscape to state customs. Think of it this way: Illinois National Guard soldiers are likely to be fans of the Chicago Bears and the Chicago Cubs. Soldiers from the Texas National Guard are probably fans of the Dallas Cowboys and the Houston Astros.
It goes deeper than that, of course. The judge in Illinois who issued the temporary restraining order today expressed her concern that Texas National Guard soldiers are unlikely to be familiar with local history, including what she called “Chicago’s history of strained police-community relations.” Referring to the “nuanced” civilian law enforcement relations in Illinois, the judge said, “It’s something that I think the state and local authorities understand extremely well, and it can be hard for federal authorities, and certainly those from Texas, to appreciate.”
The larger problem is the potential of Texas National Guard soldiers facing off against the National Guard soldiers from Oregon or Illinois. As I wrote last night, what’s going to happen if there is a confrontation between National Guard units when they are deployed in the same area of Portland or Chicago? What will happen if a firearm is discharged either accidentally or on purpose by a Texas National Guard soldier and a soldier from Illinois or Oregon is killed or wounded?
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
You can read Lucian Truscott's daily articles at luciantruscott.substack.com. We encourage our readers to get a subscription.
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