I'd encourage everyone to read the entire J.D. Simkins piece at Military Times, such is his obvious contempt for what is being done with the National Guard. Such menial jobs used to be performed by the National Park Service (NDS), but with upwards of 25% of their staff gone due to DOGE, those tasks aren't getting done.
Source: Military Times
National Guard troops recently dispatched to Washington, D.C., were notified last week they would be authorized to carry service weapons “solely in response to an imminent threat,” according to a Guard statement.
Many guardsmen, however, were unaware the imminent threat posed would come in the form of unkempt flower beds and tree debris, their weapons akin to those wielded by an Anglo-Saxon fyrd under Alfred the Great.
But such is the reality for many of the 2,300 or so troops deployed to stem the “magnitude of the violent crime” in the nation’s capital, where threats of high-priced coffee, spandex-clad cyclists and more salmon pants than a Ralph Lauren factory loom around every pothole-riddled corner.
Beckoning deployed troops to these war-torn environs are custodial and landscaping duties, which have been colorfully labeled as “beautification” despite a police-call reality that has devastated enlisted morale since the Bronze Age.
Such D.C.-based chores reportedly once fell to National Park Service staff, but in the wake of significant NPS cuts, the administration, which has a well-established affinity for landscaping, has determined that personnel wearing orange reflector vests atop camouflage have the warrior ethos necessary to beautify.
And his tone grows more and more acidic for the remainder of the piece. Utterly scathing, as it should be.
