Shameful unlearning

A Shameful Unlearned Lesson:

A probing attack against our border overruns a US position held by National Guardsmen. How did this happen?

A U.S. Border Patrol entry Identification Team site was overrun Wednesday night along Arizona's border with Mexico.

According to the Border Patrol, an unknown number of gunmen attacked the site in the state's West Desert Region around 11 p.m. The site is manned by National Guardsmen. Those guardsmen were forced to retreat.

More here.

How did it happen? I'll bet this is how:

The guardsmen are unarmed and wearing hardhats instead of Kevlar helmets — “we do not want to appear as if we’re militarizing the border,” Greeff said.

That refers to a different unit of National Guards, but it has been common to deploy them without arms. Also in the Tucson sector, tribal law bans armed Guardsmen from performing the Border Patrol support duties. The confluence of the need to obey tribal laws, and the desire not to inflame Mexican sentiment by 'appearing to militarize the border' has kept many of our people from deploying with even defensive arms.

Since the Guardsmen apparently neither shot at nor were shot at, the odds are very high that they were not able to resist an incursion by armed men. That's not acceptable for soldiers on a contested frontier.

One would think we might have learned.

Steve Edward Russell, an E-5 sergeant with the 2nd Marine Division out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., was in the guard post directly in front of the lobby when he heard a loud snap, "like a two-by-four breaking" out by the main gate. When he turned to look, he saw a large Mercedes water truck coming through the open gate, leaning heavily as it swerved around barriers. Russell fiddled briefly with his sidearm, but realized it was not loaded - in keeping with the rules of engagement for this "peacekeeping" mission. Then he saw that the truck was coming straight for him.

A moment later, two hundred and forty-one Marines were killed by the truck bomb.