Loyalty Checks

Not political but military-oriented:

Our governing class responded to the Capitol failure by setting up a Green Zone around central DC, blockading the bridges, cutting off vehicle access except via a few checkpoints, and bringing in two divisions of National Guardsmen to protect them from their fellow Americans. 

Now they've decided the Guardsmen can't be trusted and that they need their secret police, the FBI, to perform loyalty checks on the National Guard.

This is of course completely unnecessary. It's also insulting, but military service entails suffering regular insults like this. The unnecessary nature of this process is what draws my attention. Chains of command know their troops quite well already, and can easily tell you which ones they're worried about. If there's really some concern here you can assign those guys to special "volunteer" garbage-collection units who will be kept away from anything important. The FBI isn't going to be able to do a better job than their company commander of identifying the problem cases.

The Army is, of course, doing just that kind of thing. 
Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told The Associated Press on Sunday that officials are conscious of the potential threat, and he warned commanders to be on the lookout for any problems within their ranks as the inauguration approaches. So far, however, he and other leaders say they have seen no evidence of any threats, and officials said the vetting hadn’t flagged any issues that they were aware of.

”We’re continually going through the process, and taking second, third looks at every one of the individuals assigned to this operation,” McCarthy said in an interview after he and other military leaders went through an exhaustive, three-hour security drill in preparation for Wednesday’s inauguration. He said Guard members are also getting training on how to identify potential insider threats.
The lack of military service among our elected officials is noteworthy. They really do feel threatened by our own people. The very people they brought in to guard them are now seen as a potential 'insider' threat. They don't understand the service or the ranks, or that the Army and the National Guard are the best-integrated part of America (governed by an officer class who have all been to college, and none of whom who did so in the last decade will have escaped university wokeness indoctrination). There is very little danger of an 'insider threat,' not from these guys; and the few who are a little 'out there' are definitely on their bosses' radar and have been for a while.

Now another thing I can tell you about these troops without the bother of asking them is that they hate being there. They were deployed in titanic numbers without any preparation; it's cold; they've been pulled away from their homes and families to stand watch over streets that have checkpoints every block. It's got to be one of the worst assignments ever, even without being insulted, even without being subject to the FBI prowling through your life looking for reasons to punish you.

Spare a thought for those poor bastards, pardon my French. They deserve better and will receive worse before it's over. 

9 comments:

E Hines said...

It's a database check on the guardsmen, which may or may not be necessary; it's not the background checks you and I went through for our clearances.

Given who the speakers are, too, I wouldn't be surprised if McCarthy told The Associated Press just words for Left snowflakes' benefit and the actual actions taken are much more benign. At this point, it seems to me that the insult--and it is a serious one--is from the Bowsers, other Progressive-Democrats, and Leftists and not from the military hierarchy.

Eric Hines

J Melcher said...

So, no sh1t, there I was, 70 hours after touchdown in Ramstein, hustled thru the USAREUR ReplDet, to a duty assignment with a half-drunk butter-bar holding command and an E6 acting as Top -- all in borrowed gear and my First Cav shoulder patch wildly out of place -- questioned by every officer I stopped -- standing in the nighttime snow fall at the gate to the O-club New Year's Eve checking IDs and walking around each and every POV supposedly looking for Libyan terrorists. No flashlight, of course. Hand me a Colorado library card in the dark and fog the drifting flakes and I'd have waved you through. Mirror on a stick to see under fenders? You're dreaming. A colonel's Mercedes might get a glove run along under the bumper to put on good show but c'mon. Mostly what I remember bothering me was being tricked out with no fewer than 4 ammo pouches and mags for the M16 -- and not so much as a single round to pop off to sound as an alarm. Not so much as a whistle. The arms room had nightsticks for the 31-Bs but ... well, you know. All the while I was considering how if I did wind up smackin' some drunk with my borrowed plastic rifle I'd crack the stock as much as his skull.

The Beirut Marines truck bombing had been that previous autumn.

Interior guard. When nobody cares enough to secure anything the least little bit.

Grim said...

Yeah, I hear they’re issuing rifles but no ammo for this, too. If you really don’t trust them, why’d you invite 30,000 of them to your house? It’s not like they’re wanting to stand in the wind in January. If they’re adding to your stress by being there, why not let them go home?

This “checkpoint every block, within visual sight of each other” is how we did Baghdad in 2007. The basic principle was we don’t trust you, but we trust that if a VBIED gets through you will want to be able to point to someone else as the failure. So each Iraqi Police checkpoint has an Iraqi Army checkpoint in each of the four directions at the next block. If anything got through, everyone would talk about who was to blame.

Sons of Iraq were better in my experience. They would stay loyal as long as the money kept flowing, because if they let anything through their sheikh would kill them for endangering his cash flow.

Aggie said...

So, the purity testing has commenced.

raven said...

"So, the purity testing has commenced.
Exactly.

raven said...

2000 troops in DC were sworn in Sunday night as US Marshals with police powers. True?

If so, were they the 10% who passed the test?

Grim said...

Probably they were a military police unit. It’s true; and not unusual. During the famous Pentagon riot back in the Vietnam era they made the same move.

Christopher B said...

It's the 'those are our planes now' moment for the Biden crew .. well probably Harris's bunch. Saw a tweet from TX Gov Abbott that was pretty hot but I'm sure he got the message. Any Red State thinking about not following Biden's orders will find their Guard nationalized to enforce them.

ymarsakar said...

Have things gotten exciting yet for those here?

Do you want more?

Who wants more.

Season Finale. Enjoy the show.