Too little attention has been paid to Trump’s illegal federalizing of states’ National Guards. He casts aside history, tradition, and settled law that places control of these citizen soldiers in the hands of governors. If a president proposes to deploy them, it can be done only in dire circumstances and, most important, at the request of a governor. Exceptions are only when a governor is acting in violation of law, as in the Civil Rights Era in the South.
My major concern, though, is for the heavy burden that is being placed on these men and women who, after all, are citizen soldiers, not professional members of the U.S. military. When they are torn away for deployment, sometimes far from home and open-ended, their families suffer. Employers face difficult decisions about whether to replace them, temporarily or even permanently.
And they may very well have moral or ethical qualms about what they are being called upon to do. Since the Nuremberg tribunals, “I was just following orders” has been discredited as justification for what is now happening daily under Trump’s increasingly abusive seizure of power.
We, as citizens, must stand against his machismo. And, in the meantime, we must have a heart for those citizen soldiers, so like ourselves, and treat them with the respect every fellow citizen is entitled to.
Fred Reklau
Oak Park