A Montana Guardsman’s Perspective: Why I Support Defend the Guard Part 3
“We have no place in this part of the world.”
Montana’s National Guard has been deployed across the Middle East for decades, often without clear justification, minimal public knowledge or a formal declaration of war by Congress. The public is told we are at peace, yet our Guardsmen continue to face danger, endure separation from their families, and witness the waste and futility of endless foreign deployments.
The following is a powerful testimony from a Montana National Guardsman who has served both at home and abroad. His story reflects the growing realization among service members that the National Guard is being used and abused—sent overseas to fight wars that the American people never formally authorized while crises at home go unanswered. This is why he supports HB 404, Defend the Guard—a bill that ensures Montana’s Guardsmen are not sent into combat without Congress declaring war.
I am a Montana National Guardsman, I have faithfully served my country and state and I love my brother and sisters in arms. Although I am just an M-Day soldier, I have helped keep our state safe during the forest fires and I have deployed abroad to defend my country.
I enlisted into the National Guard not only to serve my country but my state as well. I felt more connected to the mission of the National Guard, which was to work on the homefront and help my community with floods, fires, etc. The National Guard has created a strong sense of community for me that I never had and a sense of camaraderie that no other organization can match. As a veteran who has deployed I have enjoyed the benefits of being a veteran, I have finished my school through the Guard, I have bought a house with the VA home loan and I have had an experience of a lifetime.
I bring up these things because they are good and they have helped me. But when I was overseas, my paradigm shifted. I was raised to think that our involvement in the Middle East was necessary to the safety of our country. My whole life I wanted to join the Armed Forces and I finally did. It wasn’t too long after enlisting that I deployed. It was an unreal experience that I was about to embark on a journey so many have done before me. There were a lot of unknowns about deploying, everyone’s deployment was different.
We couldn’t imagine what we might get into, the U.S. had just pulled out of Afghanistan, we were supposedly no longer in Iraq and the American public thought ISIS was dead. Well, we get to the Middle East and fortunately I never went anywhere dangerous, but my fellow Guardsmen did, we were spread out across the Middle Eastern theater from Syria to Iraq. Better yet, it was not active duty Army that ran the theater, it was the National Guard, a bunch of passionate, high performing part time Soldiers who care for their country and are in it because they want to be. These National Guard Soldiers and Airmen are moms, dads, sons, daughters, husbands and wives. The American public and even military personnel are told we are in peace time, but the truth is we aren’t.
There were Soldiers getting indirect fire from rockets up north, people getting shot at, there was an excessive amount of waste that we the tax payers pay for. There were all of these bad things happening, I felt useless out there. I read the news about what had been happening back home at the time, it was in Biden’s first year of office where our country was beginning to see the worst of inflation and the end of Covid. I heard from my family and friends back home about how unbearable costs were. That is when my paradigm shifted as I was sitting in the middle of nowhere hearing the news from back home. I questioned why I was in the middle of a desert in the middle of nowhere. I saw the waste, I heard what was happening up north to my friends, all in the name of national defense and to preserve the very freedoms being destroyed back home. I realized we have no place in this part of the world and all we were doing was pushing some sort of agenda created by a faceless and nameless entity a long time ago.
Brand new privates entering the military as of Jan. 1, 2023 no longer receive the National Defense Service Medal as part of graduating bootcamp. Because the discontinuation of this medal marks the supposed end of a 20 year war on terrorism. While the narrative changes, the same war continues. About a year after the end of the war on terrorism, January 28, 2024, Tower 22 in Jordan was blown up by a drone strike caused by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an Iranian backed Shia militia. This was an actual attack on a U.S. installation not run by active duty Army but the National Guard, including the Montana National guard.
This again, is a new edition to the same war with a different name under the banner of peace in the Middle East. An unknown, unconstitutional, and nameless war that continues searching for the next headline to garnish new support from the public. Meanwhile men and women of the National Guard continue their rotations out there without question as it is their job to answer the call to duty as we all selflessly signed up to do. We as service members swore an oath to the constitution to protect and defend the constitution, country and its people. Therefore it is in our being to answer that call and to go without question.
That is why I support the Defend the Guard Act, because I believe that the National Guard is used and abused. I believe that the National Guard belongs back home, fighting the battles that happen on U.S. soil, whether it is hurricanes, floods, fires, riots, the border or any other national emergency where the Guard is needed. The Defend the Guard Act protects the Guard from unconstitutional wars not declared by Congress, the way it should be. We have been told by high ranking leadership that this bill is dangerous for the National Guard, I am not sure if it is or isn’t. But what I do know is that the constitution matters and the founding principles of our nation are more important.