'At What Cost': Guard Chief Argues Border Mission Is Getting in the Way of Warfighting

[rangerrebew]

'At What Cost': Guard Chief Argues Border Mission Is Getting in the Way of Warfighting
 
Military.com | By Steve Beynon
Published July 18, 2024 at 2:52pm ET

The outgoing chief of the National Guard is doubling down on his recent criticisms of the service component's long-troubled security mission on the U.S.-Mexico border, saying it's a detriment to the Guard's ability to wage war.

"The reason the Guard exists is to fight and win our nation's wars, period," Gen. Daniel Hokanson, the National Guard's top officer, said in an interview with Military.com on Wednesday. "We can do stuff along the southwest border. But at the end of the day, that is [demands] on individuals not related to their military mission set."

 
For decades, the National Guard has had some level of presence on the southwest border. But that mission was supercharged in Texas as part of Gov. Greg Abbott's ongoing Operation Lone Star, which surged that state's soldiers to combat illegal immigration in 2021. At its peak, 10,000 Guardsmen were part of the operation, which is in addition to a federal border mission of some 2,500 Guardsmen.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/07/18/what-cost-guard-chief-argues-border-mission-getting-way-of-warfighting.html

[libertybele]

Abbott deployed 10,000 guardsmen at the border.  That's quite significant and we still have an invasion on our hands.

Yet another reason to build a wall; less guardsmen would be needed and they could be utilized elsewhere.

[Fishrrman]

No, bele.

We need both a wall AND a continuing, large military presence THE ENTIRE LENGTH of the southern border (and perhaps we need it in some form on the northern border, as well).

The "wall alone" may not stop them.

It will take armed interception, coupled with an immediate "march back through the one-way gate" to deal with those who still get through.

I propose that we carefully study how certain sections of The Berlin Wall were put together, and replicate a similar system here.
HINT: The Berlin "Wall" was MORE THAN "just a single wall".
It was an entire "system" of border control that worked exceedingly well.

I was there.
I went THROUGH The Berlin Wall, in uniform, in 1971.