Let's talk about the South Dakota National Guard

First of all it's important to recognize what this is and isn't.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s decision to send up to 50 National Guard troops on a deployment to Texas using donated funds stirred up questions about whether using private money to finance a military mission is lawful.

Some legal experts have said state law apparently allows for such a move.

“Depending on the details, Noem’s dispatch of a privately funded military support force to a sister state may not be in violation of either federal or South Dakota law. And that may be the biggest problem here,” Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law wrote in a column for MSNBC.

There are around 16,000 law officers manning the border. Sending 50 more national guard is nothing but a political stunt.
Something else this isn't is a respectful use of the S.D. national guard. It's extremely doubtful that anyone in South Dakota volunteered to bust the heads of child refugees from Honduras.

Something that this is, is another step in an already existing trend of public law enforcement being rented out by wealthy private interests.

The last thing this is, is that it's not new. And that's a bad thing.
The example that I'm thinking of is the 1914 Ludlow Massacre.

In September 1913 the United Mine Workers of America called a strike against Colorado Fuel and Iron, which was partly owned by John D. Rockefeller. Everyone who went on strike were evicted from their company homes and had to live in tent villages.
The company hired the Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency thugs who liked to fire their guns into the tents at random. Strikers dug pits underneath their tents to hide from snipers.
When the strikers refused to give up, Rockefeller decided to change tactics.

When the tenacity of the strikers became apparent, the Rockefellers approached the governor of Colorado, who authorized the use of the National Guard. The Rockefellers agreed to pay their wages.

At first, the strikers believed that the government had sent the National Guard to protect them. They soon discovered, though, that the militia was under orders to break the strike.

Naturally the Guard leaders' sympathies lay with company management.
When the strikers continued to persevere, the Guard formed a new unit "called 'Troop A', which consisted largely of Colorado Fuel & Iron Company mine camp guards and mine guards hired by Baldwin–Felts, who were given National Guard uniforms."
They mounted two machine guns on a hill that overlooked the camp.

The massacre of strikers that ensued included 8 adults, 2 of them women, and 12 children (many of which were only a few months old).
Two strike leaders were captured, and then executed. Their bodies were left by the railroad tracks for days, the company thugs prevented anyone from burying the bodies.
A military board investigated and determined that all the blame was the fault of the strikers, who made the poor decision of getting in the way of the Guard's bullets.

The board's official report commended the "truly heroic behavior" of Linderfelt, the guardsmen, and the militia during the battle and blamed the strikers for any civilian casualties during the engagement

For Rockefeller, his punishment was that he had 1) set up a company union, 2) slightly improve working conditions, and 3) to go on a PR campaign and pretend to care about the miners.

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Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he plans to question Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin about the move.
“To think that rich people can start using the U.S. military to advance their objectives, independent of what the commander-in-chief and the secretary of defense think they ought to be doing, this is unbelievably dangerous,” said Smith, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “If it isn’t illegal, it ought to be illegal.”

An open admission that the National Guard is, effectively, part of the US military - which means that it is *not* the militia. Which means that the old gun control saw that the 2nd Amendment just refers to the official militia and the National Guard is the militia and 'if you wanna have gun then go and join up...' is BS.

Well, anyone studying the matter would know that anyway, but a candid admission that the NG is not the militia is as refreshing as knowing that someone like Adam Smith is Chairman of the Armed Services Committee is scary.

The central concern raised - that the military, NG or militia be used for private, elite interests is, indeed, a legitimate concern, as a look at the history of not only Ludlow but of earlier strikes by the Western Federation of Miners makes clear - the 1899 Coeur d'Alene imposition of martial law and mass incarcerations - being an egregious, cautionary example.

Rhetoric

It's extremely doubtful that anyone in South Dakota volunteered to bust the heads of child refugees from Honduras.

aside, though, it is not at all clear that there is anything nefarious going on with this particular deployment, including the fact that some of the expense is being borne by private contributions (although that bears watching). Noem is acting within her authority and responding to a legitimate request from the head of another state for assistance. Other states are certainly free to decline - as a number did in 2018 to federal requests for assistance at the border.

How about this? Strip alphabet agencies of their military assets, have the military be the military, the militia the militia (public/official - of, by and for the people of each state), make some division of National Guard assets between the two and then eliminate it.

That ought to reduce confusion and cost and improve a whole lot on accountability.

BTW - was the large, expensive, humiliating and mostly pointless deployment of NG to Washington D.C. this year any less an exercise in serving elite interests? Should we be happy that instead of some billionaire picking up the tab that taxpayers have to?

Well, it only ran to $520 million or so and made Nancy Pelosi look tough, so why worry...

And at least they apprehended a couple homicidal juvenile thugs, so it wasn't a complete waste:

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enhydra lutris's picture

@Blue Republic

lie all of the time, but generally don't know what the hell they are talking about.
The national guard is a hybrid, normally the governor's private militia that (s)he can use in any way that (s)he damn well sees fit. Historically they often been used as thugs in the service of rich and powerful assholes who call the governor and gripe about some strikers or picketers or unrest, and then the governor sends them out as in the Ludlow massacre above and many other instances.

They can be "called up" by the President in times of war, insurrection or emergency, and also by Congress. When this happens they are deemed to have been "Federalized". Das wiki has a crapload of more or less plain vanilla info on them, starting with the following para:

The National Guard is part of the reserve components of the United States Army and the United States Air Force. It is a military reserve force composed of National Guard military members or units of each state and the territories of Guam, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia, for a total of 54 separate organizations. All members of the National Guard of the United States are also members of the organized militia of the United States as defined by 10 U.S.C. § 246. National Guard units are under the dual control of the state governments and the federal government.

be well and have a good one

PS: were they regular military, all uses of the guard to enforce local law, such as in LA and Berkeley and assorted other places would be per se violations of the Possee Comitatus Act.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

They can't arrest or detain anyone. All they can do is radio border patrol if they see illegal border crossers. There are so many people crossing the border right now that the border patrol doesn't need any help whatsoever spotting illegal crossers, the bottleneck is in apprehending and processing crossers, and for that the National Guard can't do much. I doubt very much any would be into harming children.

We however continue to induce central Americans and Mexicans to make the very risky crossing by providing them with work here in exchange for very inexpensive labor. That upper middle class professional couple who has no time nor inclination for cleaning or yard work are killing migrants. The cost of inexpensive construction labor isn't only borne by our blue collar workers, it's killing people in the desert.

Historical note, I live in a town that was part of the early 1900s struggle for coal miners in Colorado and the site of the "Columbine Massacre". The old mine is now under a tri county landfill and the site of the massacre is a bike path open space. After the shooting by police and mine enforcement authorities the mine owners capitulated and made concessions to the UMWA.Edited to get the correct initials for the union.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@ban nock

The history of the guard's behavior in this country says otherwise. Among other things, machine guns are indiscriminate weapons. (I faced the guard in Berkeley, there were teens and younger among us, that they never shot or bayoneted any of us is simply due to the fact that the local officers didn't deem it necessary (or desirable), they were armed, equipped and loaded for combat, and did indiscriminately gas a large section of the town from the air including not only residences but pre-schools and grade schools full of, you guessed it, children)

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --