While You're At It...

William S. Lind suggests that the Iraq debacle also has the wonderful ancillary effect of gutting the National Guard:

One of the likely effects of the disastrous war in Iraq will be the destruction of an old American institution, the National Guard. Desperate for troops as the situation in Iraq deteriorates, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is using the National Guard in a mission for which it was never intended: carrying on a "war of choice" halfway around the world. Most Guardsmen enlisted expecting to help their neighbors in natural disasters, or perhaps maintain order locally in the event of rioting. They never signed up for Vietnam II.

Yes, the Guard was mobilized and deployed overseas in both World Wars, but those were true national wars, in which the American people were all involved one way or another. Cabinet wars, as they used to be called, are something altogether different. As Frederick the Great said, cabinet wars must be waged in such a manner that the people do not know they are going on.

But National Guardsmen are the people. To send them into a cabinet war is to misuse them in a way that will destroy them. Even in the American Revolution, militiamen were seldom asked to fight outside their own state. When they were, they usually responded by deserting...

For many Guardsmen, deployment to Iraq means economic ruin. They have mortgage payments, car payments, credit card debt, all calculated on their civilian salaries. Suddenly, for a year or more, their pay drops to that of a private. The families they leave behind face the loss of everything they have. What militia wouldn't desert in that situation?

The real scope of the damage of Mr. Rumsfeld's decision to send the Guard to Iraq--40% of the American troops in Iraq are now reservists or Guardsmen--will probably not be revealed until units return. One of the few already back saw 70% of its members leave the Guard immediately...

The fact of the matter is that Versailles on the Potomac does not care about the rest of the country in any respect, so long as the tax dollars keep coming in. My old friend King Louis XVI might be able to tell Rumsfeld & Co. where that road eventually ends up.

The few Guardsmen I've known have been good people--however, their motive for enlisting wasn't to fight what Lind aptly calls "cabinet wars." These were folks who needed money for college, or wanted guaranteed training, or who even felt patriotic and wanted to serve their country. Deployment overseas to fight in an unnecessary war brought upon us by a vainglorious underachiever is hardly the appropriate role for them.