Comment on Texas National Guard arriving in Chicago

• SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  They’re the national guard, their job is was to help old people in hurricanes.

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  • balance8873@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    :'(

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• MrEff@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  At the peak of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars the national guard and reserve (but mostly guard) made up over 75% of the troops deployed. More national guard units saw more combat than active duty units simply by sheer numbers. I did 8 years and 4 months in the guard and over half that time I was activated for two tours to Afghanistan. I did more overseas time than my active duty time equivalent. National guard units were also consistently being placed in shittier places than active duty units because the active duty commanders didn’t want difficult deployments to potentially get in the way of future promotions. So the guard also took the brunt of the casualties. My first tour was in the second worst area in the country at the time and out of all the US troops (we were with the Polish), all but one was national guard. We set the regional record for longest continuous direct fire firefight at the time and a Polish truck set the record for the largest IED hit (aprox. 550 lbs, all died).

  The longest continuous deployment during the Global War on Terrorism was also done by a guard unit. The 34th BCT did 22 months in Iraq.

  To say the guard only helps old people and with hurricanes is beyond an understatement. We provided the bulk of the boots on the ground and did the job and big army literally couldn’t do.

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  • balance8873@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I mean…it was definitely just a joke about the chonkers pictured. I didn’t and never will know the level of detail you described, but I’m aware that the national guard is wildly overused. I think there was a last week tonight on how fucked up it all is.

    However, these guys^^ are hunting humans for sport and don’t deserve anyone’s respect regardless of if it’s their “choice” or not. So chonkers will be made fun of.

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  • Aljernon@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    The guards job “in theory” is to help old people in hurricanes. It blew my mind at the time that National Guard units could be federalized and sent overseas. Wild that that is legal on any level. The whole point of the national guard is to defend the homeland and of course assist with natural disasters. That the President could strip the Homeland of it’s defenders to fight foreign wars was bonkers to me.

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• Dasus@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I served in a military in Finland in peacetime. That’s basically what we use instead of a national guard.

  There was no crisis when our company was on-call, but at least one or two companies stated every weekend to make sure there’s enough people to rapidly deploy assistance anywhere.

  My older brother had to go and help a city out. But yeah, it’s basically just assisting people in crisises.

  Unless Putler decides he wants to give it a go, but I strongly doubt it.

  Taistelukenttä 2020 | Slagfält 2020 | Battlefield 2020

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