The Oregon National Guard is sending off 230 guardsmen to Iraq and Syria amid soaring tensions in the Middle East as the US is pledging to defend Israel from an expected Iranian reprisal attack.
The US has about 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 troops occupying eastern Syria. The Oregon guardsmen are likely being sent out on a regular rotational deployment, but the move comes as the US beefs up its presence in the region.
According to KGW8, a local NBC affiliate in Oregon, the unit is being deployed for a year and will serve as “primary artillery defenders” for the US and its partners in Iraq and Syria. The soldiers held a mobilization ceremony on Friday and were sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to undergo training before the deployment.
The US frequently deploys the National Guard to active conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Somalia. A national movement in the US is seeking to remove the federal government’s ability to deploy the National Guard to war zones through legislation at the state level, known as the Defend the Guard Act.
The Defend the Guard Act would prohibit the federal government from deploying a state’s National Guard to a conflict zone where Congress hasn’t officially declared war, which hasn’t happened since World War II. The bill has passed through several state legislatures but has yet to become law.
Visit Defendtheguard.us to see if the Defend the Guard Act has been introduced in your state. Click here to volunteer for phone banking to help get the legislation passed in states where it has been introduced.
The Oregon National Guard soldiers will be deployed under the US-led anti-ISIS coalition, known as Operation Inherent Resolve. ISIS doesn’t hold significant territory in Iraq and Syria, but there’s been a resurgence of ISIS attacks amid tensions and other escalations in the region.
ISIS has claimed responsibility for 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria this year. In July, US Central Command said that it had participated in 196 missions against ISIS with partner forces in Iraq and Syria, which killed 44 suspected ISIS operatives.
But the US has also been engaged in battle with Iraqi Shia militias that fall under the Popular Mobilization Forces, who are sworn enemies of ISIS and are part of Iraq’s security forces. From October 2023 to February of this year, the militias launched hundreds of attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria in response to US support for Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza.
The attacks culminated in the killing of three US Army Reserve troops at Tower 22, a secretive US base in Jordan. Forty-one members of the Arizona National Guard were also wounded. Iran and the Iraqi government pressured the militias to stop the attacks, and there was a lull until recently. In the past week, several US troops have been injured in rocket and drone attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria.
Sending US soldiers to defend genocide is the ultimate malevolent act.
And we'll be obliged to "thank them for their service" … what a revolting predicament. And their sacrifice will signal a new birth of freedom so that gov't of the people by the polscum for the rich shall not perish from the earth. What a f_cking nauseating evil fraud, America!
Agree, that feeling when you wake up from the lies from the government, and legacy media is nauseating. The America of the people, for the people is long gone. Now it's been replaced with a government for the rich elites, and the military industrial complex. The people are now just slave labor, to pay for all the aforementioned groups expensive lifestyles. Our Freedoms are slowly slipping away, and most people don't even care or notice. I'm old so there isn't much they can do to me. I surrendered my life to GOD years ago. But I worry about the children's future, and what their America will be like.
more like "fq you for your service" as far as I'm concerned.
Right, Nt’l Guard aren’t 18 yr olds.
Wow, that's a really long way from Oregon, isn't it? This demonstrates again that those who say the National Guard is the 'militia' mentioned in the 2nd Amendment is false. The NG is just another force being used for the benefit of those who profit from the ongoing conflicts Wash. gets involved in and can be sent anywhere in the world with a stroke of a pen.
DON'T VOLUNTEER FOR ANYTHING!
Of course the bases are under attack. Why? Because our troops are there, uninvited. The morons in D.C. want them there so some will come back in body bags or maimed in order to rally the dumb, uninformed citizens of the U.S. of Amnesia for war. Again. Just like in 2003. Sending National Guardsmen, with no combat experience, very little training, will get many sent home in body bags.
"the unit is being deployed for a year "
They won't be there that long. They'll either be evacuated out within the next few months – or dead in the same time frame.
"there’s been a resurgence of ISIS attacks amid tensions and other escalations in the region."
In fact, the US is supporting ISIS in attacks against Syria and Iraq. That's why there's been a resurgence. It's all part of the overall plan to get a Middle East war started.
Why should US troops pay the price for Biden’s failure to rein in Netanyahu?
Harrison Mann
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/13/us-troops-israel-gaza-joe-biden-benjamin-netanyahu
And they wonder why recruitment is a problem.
Not for long as they'll have the 'New Americans' from El Salvadore, Venezuela, Mexico and other S.American countries in uniform.
I flash back to that scene in, I think it was "Gangs of New York" ? Where immigrants coming off ships are basically recruited to the Union Army the moment they step off the ships ?
Oregon is where I currently am and many of us have no such wish for any deployments of any kind. Keep your arses home!
Thanks from all of us!
Hey hey, Time Zone Buddy ! PST for the win !
Honestly thought you were in Vermont for some reason. New Mexico was gonna be a second guess.
Oregon is such a beautiful state. I spent some time in the Columbia River Gorge and on the coast a few years ago. Wish I could go back.
Y’all come and visit! 🙂
I am heading back to the desert! 😉
That is where my heart is happiest!
I live in Oregon too and feel the same way.
As if that's gonna make any difference…!
And at a time when we're supposed to believe that the DPRC could invade Taiwan, and then the US West Coast, at any moment !!
New slogan ! "National Guard : Not Guarding The Nation You Would Think"
Similar to US Coast Guard ships thousands of miles away in Persian Gulf…!
I live outside Vancouver and we get a lot of US stations from Seattle. Some years back the US Navy ran a propagandvertisement where the tag line slogan was, "America's Navy : A Global Force For Good".
I always felt it meant "A Global Force, For Good". As in, forever.
Our empire never dies.
That was on paper then and myself believed in it as in good…!
Now, it's more like " A Dying Global Force, For Evil"…!
Back in the day, the NG was a good gig. Once a month and a 2 week party in the summer. My, how things have changed. Pretty soon we'll be sending Boy Scouts over for Summer Camp.
Of course one should condemn the unfathomably cruel barbarism of the Islamists of IS(IS). That goes without saying. But at the same time one can have some amount of admiration for the incredible discipline they show with which they prioritize their attacks on America's enemies. You don't see them antagonize Israeli very much. They don't do shit for Palestinians, perhaps even less than the Arab regimes or Erdogan does. They disappear from the pages and the screens when not needed and then for some mysterious reason they all of sudden materialize again and seem to pop up every time and precisely in the area's that the US needs them to pop up, fighting regimes that the US seriously dislikes. Really remarkable that.
I didn't get the sarcasm at first. Excellent.
Lol!
😉
More lives sacrificed for the rich and powerful.
That decision by the Biden administration is weird!
The Oregon National Guard is sent to Iraq and to Syria, two countries whose governments have officially asked that American soldiers get out of their country.
The Oregon National Guard is sent there not to help overcome a natural disaster in these countries, but as a gesture to help the Netanyahu government that has been bombing both countries, plus Lebanon.
In Niger, the government has asked American soldiers to get out and the Biden administration has acquiesced. But in Iraq and in Syria, it is doubling down. Why the double standard?
Iraq and Syria are close to the sacred cow.
“Come on people now! Smile on your brother! Everybody get together try and love one another right now! right now! Right now!”
Defending a criminal nation- even if its enemies are criminal as well- has absolutely no bearing on US national security, nor should we make it an issue of security. The National Guard is intended for national security- not Iraqi security, not Syrian security, not Israeli security… 'national' is in the name, right? RIGHT?