Hundreds of National Guard troops are being mobilized to help protect DC monuments from rioters who want to tear them down or deface them:
FOX NEWS – Hundreds of troops with the Washington, D.C., National Guard have mobilized to protect monuments in the nation’s capital, a Pentagon spokesperson has confirmed.
Interior Secretary David Bernhardt requested the action earlier this week, as protesters target statues and other historical markers during ongoing demonstrations in the wake of George Floyd’s police custody death in Minneapolis at the end of May.
The Pentagon confirmed that roughly 400 D.C. Guard members have been activated and are on standby.
“Since their activation, none of the National Guard members have been dispatched to actual monument locations to provide assistance to the NPP,” Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Christian Mitchell said in a statement. “They remain on standby at the DC Armory at this time. They will support U.S. Park Police at key monuments to prevent any defacing or destruction.”
While they will be assisting US Park Police, the Pentagon spokesperson says the National Guard members will be UNARMED:
Mitchell noted that the National Guard members are unarmed and “will serve as a uniformed deterrence” and in a “crowd management capacity.”
Protesters on Monday attempted to tear down a statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square by the White House, and defaced it with the phrase “killer scum,” Reuters reported. Bernhardt said afterward that he visited Lafayette Square and witnessed the destruction. He said the country “will not bow to anarchists,” and that “law and order will prevail, and justice will be served.”
The Lincoln Memorial and WWII Memorial were also defaced in earlier protests.
During a protest on Tuesday that took place in front of D.C.’s Emancipation Memorial, one demonstrator announced that on Thursday they would tear down the memorial’s statue of Abraham Lincoln standing over a freed slave.
I get that the Pentagon wants to deescalate the situation and all, but sending unarmed troops out there to deal with some of these rioters just doesn’t sound smart to me. Nobody wants to see anyone killed or injured, but these mobs get violent and if our National Guard troops can’t defend themselves appropriately, they will be the ones in the hospital or worse.