Vermont wants to renegotiate on SysAdmin troops
■"Vermonters Vote on Study Of National Guard's Role: Antiwar Effort Looks at 'Weekend Warrior,'" by Pam Belluck, New York Times, 2 March 2005, p. A11.
Vermont towns passing resolutions asking State Legislature to investigate costs and impact of having National Guard units in Iraq-on their ability to defend Vermont!
More seriously, these peace activists are using the notion that the Guard serves the state they live in, first and foremost. Yes, they can be tapped under U.S. Code for the overseas stuff, but they do actually belong to governors. So yeah, the average citizen considers their main task to be responding to natural disasters and emergencies.
But it runs deeper than that. The activists argue the social costs of being in combat: "There are people from Vermont who have been sent to Iraq who have been called upon to do things which they wouldn't choose to do. They have been put in a vulnerable position. And then when they come home, we're the ones that are going to take care of them."
Is this just nutty Vermont? No. Small-town police forces have been put under serious strain all over the nation. This is real. What it says is, we need to renegotiate this function-this SysAdmin obligation we seem to have taken on with the Global War on Terrorism.