Goc. Greg Abbot called out 5,000 National Guard troops in anticipation of the protests today. Morale is not high:
However, newly obtained internal documents suggest the Texas Military Department is facing significant logistical and personnel challenges as it races to meet the governor’s directive, Austin American-Statesman reported Friday.
The American-Statesman reviewed documents including one signed by the state’s top-ranking military official that highlight concerns over compressed timelines for training troops in crowd management and de-escalation tactics.
Great. That sounds like a real recipe for success. But then they don’t really need to worry. All it will take is one protester spitting at a cop and Trump will call in the Green Berets.
It sounds like moral among the Guard troops isn’t great:
Two National Guard soldiers told the American-Statesman they had serious reservations about the size and urgency of the mission — describing it as far larger and more complex than Abbott’s 2020 deployment of 1,000 troops in response to demonstrations following the killing of George Floyd.
The service members, who were not named in the report, voiced unease about the department’s preparedness for such a large-scale operation.
“I was shocked that they were mobilizing the amount of people that they were mobilizing,” one of the guardsmen said, per the report.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me why we would be activated in such large numbers against the citizens we’re sworn to protect.”
Another guardsman questioned the political motivations of their deployment, saying it “does strike me as a suppression of free speech ahead of time.”
“Did I swear an oath to the president? Did I swear an oath to the governor?” They said. “Or did I swear an oath to our basic, inalienable rights?”
I’m quite sure there are plenty of Trumper Texas National Guard troops. But even some of them might just be queasy about taking on fellow Texans. And just like California, its population is heavily immigrant and while plenty of Latinos there inexplicably voted for trump, they are probably having second thoughts now.