Military Priorities

Someone needs to set forth a definition of what the Air National Guard’s duties and responsibilities are. As it stands they are supposed to be combat support in Iraq, disaster relief during natural disasters and now they are supposed to be Border Patrol. Their mission in the 1960s during the Vietnam War was "domestic security." So when Dubya was avoiding military duty he flew airplanes to protect our airspace from the ever creeping presence of communism. But today, no one knows what it is the Air National Guard are supposed to be trained to do or ready to perform. The Air National Guard is not supposed to be some catch all for the President to order around whenever he feels like it. A comprehensive military policy is necessary setting forth what roles the military is supposed to play in this nation and around the world.

As genocide occurs in Darfur, this Administration has concluded that the most pressing military threat to the US are Latinos coming across the border. This military threat adds billions of dollars to our economy and ensures a lot of services such as picking fruits and vegetables, building houses, cleaning homes and offices and other work is performed regularly. Apparently, all of these Latinos streaming across the border are more important than assisting Liberia when it specifically requested US intervention in its civil war.

As people die needlessly around the world, the United States needs to be willing to use its military force and its leadership to build coalitions of nations to mobilize and act. Without a comprehensive strategy as to the role the United States’, when crises occur, there is no framework for any Administration to determine how it should handle the situation. The ad hoc method of making decisions has resulted in contradictory decisions - it is right to stop the genocide in the former Yugoslavia but not in Rwanda, Darfur, or Sierra Leone.

Without a plan there is no way to prepare or train the military personnel, including the Air National Guard. This results in people protesting the over extension of the military and its personnel. The same military personnel are going into Iraq over and over again while other battalions remain home the entire duration of the conflict. Troops are sent to New Orleans without the proper equipment or training and are then told to attend to the Mexican border - again without the necessary training.

The lack of coherent policies puts the personnel in harms way. Without the necessary training, equipment and the over extension results in the personnel being overly tired and not as sharp and aware of their surrounds as they must be. All of this results in mistakes that can result in death and harm to innocent civilians who believe, reliably, that the military personnel assisting them are prepared and knowledgeable about what to do. Unfortunately, they do not.

Although, without a comprehensive plan, politicians can use the military for political gain alone as Dubya has done with the Air National Guard in Monday’s speech and saying that thousands can be deployed to the border as support for the Border Patrol.