"It isn't the National Guard's job to fight wars anywhere else."
Oh, you want to go back to the era where the cowards hid out in the Guard, eh? Fat lot of good they'd do in guarding the border, then.
"Defense of the borders of the US is one of the Guard's stated, mandated missions. The Guard has been misused for the last 25 years as the backup for the active duty."
There was a specific reason for doing that. The Joint Chiefs set it up that way so that, the next time some damn fool politician wanted to send a bunch of troops somewhere in the name of "doing something," he'd have to call up the Guard, and thus be forced to explain exactly why Joe the barber and Bob the auto mechanic were being sent to some place nobody had ever heard of.
You mean like when President Bush was in the Guard?
There was a specific reason for doing that. The Joint Chiefs set it up that way so that, the next time some damn fool politician wanted to send a bunch of troops somewhere in the name of "doing something," he'd have to call up the Guard, and thus be forced to explain exactly why Joe the barber and Bob the auto mechanic were being sent to some place nobody had ever heard of.
Nice try, but not even close. The Joint Chiefs didn't change anything except increasing the funding to the Guard. The Federal government now pays close to 95% of the costs of training and equipping the National Guard. The reason for the increased funding was to create and maintain a pool of reasonably well-trained and well-equipped troops that could be called up in short order (90 days) to fill out the active duty. That's why 52% of the combat power of the US Army is in the National Guard - it's way cheaper than having *another* ten divisions on active duty. It's simple cost-benefit analysis.