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The Army National Guard has a broad mission, with members often holding civilian jobs or attending college while serving. The Guard can be activated only by state governors or the president of the United States to assist in emergencies.
In recent years, the National Guard has been deployed to patrol the New York City Subway, assist during the April 2024 total solar eclipse, and support medical facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some believe the National Guard should have been called upon by former President Trump on Jan. 6 to help quell the attack on the Capitol.
Watch the video above as Straight Arrow News contributor Ruben Navarrette discusses how the National Guard has become politically weaponized and argues why Trump should have ordered the Guard to respond to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
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The following is an excerpt from the above video:
When a group of protesters tramples upon the authority of local police and morphs into a mob, what exactly is the executive supposed to do? As for me, I’m all in on all fours calling out the National Guard and doing so at the first sign of trouble to prevent even bigger trouble.
Critics of the idea of using armed soldiers to control U.S. citizens who have lost their damn minds will often point to the tragedy that occurred at Kent State, where in May of 1974, unarmed students protesting the Vietnam War were killed and nine others were wounded when 28 soldiers from the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd.
I prefer to cite the good things that National Guard troops did during the Civil Rights Movement. For instance, in June 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace, in a symbolic stunt, stood in the doorway of the Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama to try to prevent two Black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from entering the building. The unapologetic segregationist got spanked and taught a civics lesson to boot when President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order which federalized the Alabama National Guard. Then, Guard General Henry V. Graham then ordered Wallace to step aside. How great was that?
As for why Americans keep winding up back here and confronting the question of when and how to use the National Guard, we can put at least some of the blame on Thomas Jefferson. You see, once upon a time, the Founding Father created a document that declared, quote, “whenever any form of government becomes destructive, it is the right of the people to alter it or to abolish it and to institute new government.” You see, but Jefferson left out something: The government also has rights, and that includes the right to push back in order to prevent such an uprising, and to do so with all available resources, including the National Guard.
