I helped lead the National Guard. Troops don’t belong in our cities.

We must not permit this gross misuse of the military to be normalized.

Credit: U.S. Army National Guard/Jim Greenhill

By Maj. Gen. Randy Manner, US Army (Ret.)

I served for more than 35 years in the US Army and the National Guard. Four generations of my family have served in combat or during times of war. My grandfather served in the Navy in World War II, my father served in Vietnam, I served in the Middle East, and my son served in the Air Force doing search and rescue in Afghanistan. I entered military service as a young Airborne Ranger platoon leader in the 82nd Airborne Division. I served in the regular Army, then as a citizen-soldier in the National Guard, and then was recalled to active duty after September 11 for the next 11 years.

It was an honor serving as the Deputy Commanding General of the United States Third Army, responsible for helping to safeguard the lives of tens of thousands of American sons and daughters in combat, and finally as the number two leader in the National Guard Bureau in the Pentagon, responsible for training, equipping, and manning units comprising over 450,000 National Guardsmen.

Every bit of that experience tells me that the deployments we’re currently seeing inside American cities—including Los Angeles, Washington DC, Memphis, Portland, and Chicago—are not only un-American and wrong, they’re being done at the expense of our young men and women in uniform, their families, and their civilian employers.

As the Acting Vice Chief of the National Guard Bureau, I was responsible for reviewing all requests for the use of the National Guard, whether in a federal status supporting overseas deployments defending our nation, or supporting a governor during times of natural disasters—such as hurricanes, flooding, forest fires, or earthquakes—to help save American lives. During that time, if a request from a governor had ever come to me asking for a deployment like the ones we’re seeing in our cities, it would have been flatly rejected as a misuse of National Guard resources.

It is important to note that such requests were never even submitted for consideration, as they were known by all to be absurd. Other than the administration stating such deployments today are needed, there is absolutely no legal or mission justification for it. These deployments are a waste of taxpayer money and reduce the combat readiness of our Guard. These soldiers are trained for combat operations—not to spread mulch and entertain tourists, as they’ve been seen doing in DC.

In contrast to the regular US Army, where soldiers train and are housed full-time on a military base, National Guard members are citizen-soldiers, which means they typically have a full-time or part-time job, or they’re attending college. Citizen-soldiers train for their military mission one weekend a month and for two weeks for annual training.

The Guard has two missions: The first mission is to be America’s strategic reserve, prepared to defend the country from overseas threats. We regularly send Guard units overseas to both relieve active duty units as well as to deploy to have a footprint with other partner nations around the world.

The secondary mission is to be available during peacetime for governors to use predominantly in times of natural disaster. Guard members are there for governors to augment the resources in his or her state, and they take great pride in being the first ones there when their fellow citizens need them. Whenever a natural disaster strikes, devastating a local community, one can find Guardsmen on the ground, doing everything in their power to help.

Our military is not trained in law enforcement. There are absolutely zero situations where our National Guard should be on the streets of America as a status quo measure, absent some acute short-term crisis. We would never send our sheriff’s deputies to Afghanistan for a special operation; it’s just as illogical to send highly trained combat soldiers and put them into civilian law enforcement roles. As DC police officer and Virginia National Guard veteran Daniel Hodges recently wrote:

“Soldiers are trained to fight and win wars. Military Police notwithstanding, soldiers are not trained for law enforcement roles. They are not trained to conduct traffic stops, they are not trained in deescalation, crisis intervention, and DC code. They do not have the legal authority to conduct routine stops or make arrests. Aside from very narrow roles such as blocking and directing traffic or riot control, National Guard members are not trained, equipped, or authorized to be of any great help in combating crime.”

Usually, when the Guard is called up, it’s all hands on deck. Employers and families understand and are extremely supportive. When a soldier or airman deploys outside the US as part of the strategic reserve, the overwhelming majority are notified at least a year in advance, giving them crucial time to plan with their family and workplace.

Deploying the Guard to American cities, however, leaves no time to plan. Instead, family members are being yanked away for a mission that’s not urgent or popular in the homeland they’re sworn to defend. Parents have inadequate time to arrange childcare. Employers lose critical staff with little information on when they’ll be back from a mission many don’t support. Meanwhile, no one’s getting a paycheck or going to college in the Guardsmen’s shoes while they put their life on hold.

We need to avoid sliding back in time to the 1960s, when there was a great divide between the military and the American people. When my father returned home from Vietnam, he was prohibited from wearing his uniform on the way to and from work because of the insults he and other military faced. The “baby-killer” epithet was a common refrain hurled at returning veterans by those who had never served.

After terrorists killed thousands of Americans on September 11, the Guard was put in airports around the US to provide a sense of security for several months. That use of the National Guard helped restore public faith, because we were under attack as a nation by a hostile foreign entity. Thousands of Americans died instantly in those attacks. The military was viewed as a trusted institution in our country because people knew we would stand up for what was right, and that we could be counted on to defend our country. That remains true today, but the Guard is at risk of being dangerously politicized by the recent deployments we’ve seen.

It is absolutely wrong to have the military in our cities. We do not want to go back to the way that it once was, with a great divide separating civilians and coloring their perceptions of our men and women in uniform. We want to maintain the trust that has been built up for decades between our military and the people they are sworn to protect. These are our sons and daughters, and they have not changed one bit—they are still every bit as proud, patriotic, and ready to discharge their duties with integrity and efficiency. What’s changed is the signals coming from civilian leadership.

Deploying our military to watch over and intimidate our citizens is wrong and presents a clear and present danger to the First Amendment rights and freedoms we cherish. It must stop.

Maj. Gen. Randy Manner (Ret.) was the Acting Vice Chief of the US Army National Guard Bureau. The views expressed here are his own, and he does not speak on behalf of any US government entity.