National Guard Troops Aren’t Happy They’re Just Trump’s Toy Soldiers
from the martial-law-play-set-age-79-and-up dept
Trump continues to wield everything he controls like a weapon against his enemies, even when the law says he can’t. Trump sent thousands of National Guard troops (and a couple hundred Marines) to Los Angeles to quell nonexistent riots and otherwise get in the way of local law enforcement.
Of course, it was nothing but a show of force: a petty president doing things to his perceived enemies just because he could. This was met with a lawsuit filed by the state of California, but even having that deployment declared illegal by a federal judge hasn’t made Trump any more hesitant to do the same thing to other places he feels have too many Democratic politicians.
This hasn’t exactly made him popular with the troops. National Guard troops sent to Los Angeles found themselves without beds, much less the guarantee of a steady paycheck, before being asked to do a bunch of regular cop stuff, like hassle randos on the street and/or hang out on the perimeter as federal agents raided marijuana grow operations.
The troops made their displeasure known in the creative way only military members can: they raised objections with their superiors, they sought behavioral health counseling, and… they defecated in Humvees.
You’d think some lessons would be learned from the administration’s failed “War on Los Angeles.” But, of course, this administration expends a lot of effort remaining deliberately ignorant. So, we’re seeing a second act play out which, unfortunately, is somehow even worse than the invasion of LA.
Leveraging the (alleged) attempted carjacking of a former DOGE staffer known as “Big Balls,” Trump claimed Washington DC could no longer capably handle violent crime. Using this one-off mugging of a rich white kid, Trump sent the National Guard to DC — along with tons of federal officers — to turn this alleged criminal war zone into a place where people could safely… I don’t know… gut every single federal agency Trump doesn’t like.
The response from troops now patrolling DC streets is more of the same: we didn’t sign up for this. Those unfortunate enough to get shoved into DC to satisfy Trump’s fantasies are now getting owned by their own. Here’s Schuyler Mitchell, reporting for Mother Jones:
Last week, the soldiers deployed to fight a “crime emergency” instead found themselves completing “beautification” duties on Capitol Hill and patrolling Krispy Kremes. Users on the r/NationalGuard subreddit were quick to give their colleagues a new nickname: National Guardeners.
There’s your first morale hit: people are openly mocking you for being assigned to duties you never wanted, much less asked for. And while there may be considerable overlap with people now claiming they didn’t vote for this, National Guard troops can’t do much about the situation they’re in. Sure, they could just walk off the job, but “you can’t fire me, I quit” tends to be greeted with a court martial and a bit of a cooling off period in the nearest military prison.
Plus, part of the whole military thing is the expectation that you serve the Commander-in-Chief as well as the nation that employs you. Guess which entity has the most power.
The National Guard, as a whole, is pretty much incapable of doing anything but complaining about this. Sure, we might want to see an organized rebellion (or at least a mass walk-out), but people who spend more time tossing sandbags than tossing grenades are in for a hell of a fight if Trump decides it’s time to send in the Marines to tamp down the morale issues bubbling to the surface that his actions have generated.
That’s the worst case scenario. The best case scenario is this: the National Guard is going to continue to bleed experience and talent and won’t even be able to sucker in the requisite number of people capable of fogging a mirror to offset the attrition.
Alex, a National Guard recruiter from one of the states that sent troops to DC who requested anonymity to speak freely, told Mother Jones that the DC mission has deterred potential recruits and pushed already-disillusioned soldiers to their breaking points.
On top of all of this, it’s going to start fucking some troops out of their retirement pay:
[S]hortly after the DC deployment, Alex said, they received instructions not to drill for the rest of the fiscal year (which ends September 30).
“It generally gets like this at the end of the fiscal year, money’s always tight, but not to the point where I’m not able to drill,” Alex said. Without additional drills, some will not be able to log a “good year” toward retirement. Alex put it succinctly: “I’m missing work for the army because the state ran out of money because they decided to send military police to DC.”
And it’s not just Trump who thinks National Guard troops (and other military members) are just handy chess pieces he can use in his “own the libs” games of 4-D checkers. There are plenty of Republican politicians willing to be both the jackboot and bootlicker, like [massive sigh] the current governor of South Dakota, Larry Rhoden:
Governor Larry Rhoden is mobilizing SD National Guardsmen at President Donald Trump’s request.
According to a press release, Rhoden is mobilizing 12 guardsmen from the 129th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment based in Rapid City. The group will “support operations in Washington D.C.,” the news release said.
Know this: Trump didn’t directly ask Rhoden to send in some troops. He merely sent a blanket request for assistance to every Republican governor and correctly assumed a lot of them would bend over backwards to oblige him.
This is keeping with the state tradition of sending the National Guard anywhere but where it’s truly needed, one started by current DHS head Kristi Noem during her tenure as governor. She sent a bunch of South Dakota National Guard troops to the Texas border during her term, while refusing to send the National Guard to help her own constituents when they were being flooded out of their homes.
None of this is about crime. None of this is about safety. It’s just a president thugging out and dragging people who can’t say no without suffering severe consequences along for the ride. And he’s surrounded by power politicians willing to turn people who gave up at least a part of their life in service to their country to serve as nothing more than spank bank material for Trump’s masturbatorial martial law fantasies.
Filed Under: los angeles, martial law, national guard, police state, trump administration, washington dc
Comments on “National Guard Troops Aren’t Happy They’re Just Trump’s Toy Soldiers”
Then quit. I have no sympathy for people who are supposed to ready to die defending the country who go along with doing the wrong thing out of fear.
Re:
As the article mentions, going AWOL has consequences even for the National Guard. People for whom the National Guard is a part-time endeavor likely wouldn’t want to lose their full-time jobs by saying “fuck that” and walking out on the military.
Re: Re: i bet the consequence of a car bomb is greater
compared to going awol
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I’m sure they are, Mr. Right-Wing Provocateur. But no one here is advocating for the use of car bombs in any context.
They can do plently, specifically they can do NOTHING
The National Guard, as a whole, is pretty much incapable of doing anything but complaining about this.
Ah yes, the only choice they have is to ‘just follow orders’. Remind me, how well did that work for the last military that used that excuse, and how respected are they these days?
If morale among US troops is bad and getting worse due to the contempt, mockery and derision they’re facing from the public for acting as the regime’s attack dogs then all I can say is good, it should be.
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Among a growing number of Republicans, they sadly think the good guys lost in World War II.
There was some guy in Utah who sought a “balanced” and “objective” treatment of World War II for school history textbooks. He seems to feel the U.S. did Hitler dirty.
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And then Republicans accuse everybody else of anti-Semitism. There’s nothing more anti-Semitic than claiming the people that murdered six million Jews didn’t get a fair shake.
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Backing Israel for the sole purpose of preparing to send the world’s Jews back to Israel as a precondition of a religious “end times” myth—and implying through support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza that Jewish people are violent and bloodthirsty by nature—is, at a bare minimum, a very close second.
Re: Its not bad enough for them yet
Its all a cost benifit analysis, right now if your in the National Guard you have rights like the ability to go back to your job.
“Just following orders” is highly dependent on the orders given. Deployed on guard duty for a federal building or as cleaning crew in DC is still legal. Most people the line is when you take people’s freedoms away, as the guard are not cops.
This is of course the problem, Trump’s admin is riding really close to the line of whats legal, they want something to happen without being the ones taking the opening shot. The best way to do that is to put a bunch of bodys in front of court houses and other federal buildings. So far no one is dumb enough to see the guard as an actual threat. So what the guard is doing, asking people to talk to the PR team, is the only passive restance they can do till something changes.
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Right now, the orders are still legal. So they don’t have many options.
Until violence breaks out. Hopefully they then remember how much Trump hates them when they pick a side.
Re: Re: Plenty of terrible things have been 'legal' through even just US history
Every time I see the line ‘the orders are legal’ I can’t help but wonder, ‘How many of the orders the WW2 era german soldiers were given were legal according to the country’s laws at the time those orders were given?’
That argument also has the fatal flaw in that it means all the regime would have to do is claim that any order they issue is legal(say with a handy EO) and the soldiers would still be in the clear ‘just following orders’, no matter what those orders were.
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One potential problem facing the people who don’t like these orders is simple: The people who are at least okay with these orders might outnumber them. One guy out of ten could easily be overtaken by the other nine and turned in to their superiors for punishment. That said, if one guy out of ten was fine with the order and the other nine weren’t, I’d like to hope the objections of the nine would carry more weight with their superiors than the compliance of the one.
The issue, then, is where someone metaphorically draws a line and says “this far, no further”. Everyone has a different place for that line—and not everyone is prepared (or willing) to face the consequences for drawing that line. Some Nazi soldiers may not have liked the orders they were given but went along with them anyway because they preferred quiet compliance to being executed for treason. We still call them Nazis, though.
Re: Re: Re:2 A few good apples in the barrel
Time to tweak an old classic in that case…
‘A good soldier who covers for a bad soldier is not a good soldier’.
Complexity.
Best comment I heard was years ago from conservative pundit David Frum (author of W’s “Axis of Evil” speech). “People think Trump is playing 3D chess when in reality, he’s just eating the pieces…”
Go for it, Donny Boy! Keep pissing off the armed people that comprise our military to bolster your ego (and wealth). You can be the next ANWAR SADAT!