Washington – There could have been a typo in the order. One letter can make all the difference.
Law enforcement.
Or was it a lawn execution?
It looked like the latter to a force of national security guards deployed in downtown Washington, D.C. by President Donald Trump.
Armed with shovels, rakes and leaf blowers, they founded Beachhead on a recent summer morning at McPherson Square just north of the White House. They shoveled wooden chips, smoothed them out, and blew leaves and debris from the sidewalk beneath the statue of Civil War hero Brig. General James Macpherson is straddled the horse. Several tourists ramified the 1.6 acre park under the shade of ancient red oaks.
But for the ham and cries of the leaf blower, it was far from Trump’s portrayal of social media in a lawless city where “crime, savage, filth, scum” existed.
That’s exactly what district authorities want to happen to the presence of the National Guard.
On September 4th, DC Attorney General Brian Schwarb filed a lawsuit to end what he called the illegal deployment of more than 2,000 National Guard troops from seven states into districts. He branded it as an unwilling military occupation beyond Trump’s authority.
“It is not only unnecessary and undesirable to deploy the National Guard to engage in law enforcement, but it is also dangerous and harmful to the district and its residents,” Schwarb said in a statement.
The security guards at McPherson Square were like a world ferrying there by US Park Service officials and excluded from crime, savages and scum.
Under the title “Glorification of the Joint Task Force,” the soldiers scrubed over 3.2 miles of roads, collected over 677 garbage bags, and helped dispose of five trucks of plant waste since the National Park Service first mobilized to Washington. Currently, approximately 2,300 national security guards are deployed in the country’s capital. This is 950 from the city’s military and 1,340 from other states.
“It’s the National Guard, not the “national gardener,” but the National Guard,” said Sen. Jack Reid, a ranking Democrat for the Armed Services Committee. “The Pentagon refused to answer questions about how yard chores are suitable for fighting soldiers.
Trump speaks on his part about how important it is for the country’s capital to maintain an untouched look. “I had a very clever father who he said, ‘Son, you walked into the restaurant, look at the dirty front door, don’t enter,'” Trump said last month. “If the entrance is dirty, the kitchen is dirty too.” Same as the capital.
Some Department of Defense officials responded to the deployment in Washington with skepticism. One senator’s defense attorney, who was not allowed to speak publicly, joked that the war on terrorism turned into a war on weeds, and once they become sergeants, the National Guard was ready to respond to the threats the yard would cast.
Connecting with the community
The Defense Department said security guards are particularly skilled at ties with the community, often filling punching bags before floods and helping them clean up afterwards. Mulching and blowing away may not fit anyone’s definition of crime combat, but they make the community better.
But even by the army deployed to stop crime, they wore leaf blowers. It’s not without risk. It is against the law to spin a noisy, stinky gas-powered blower in Washington, DC. However, there are loopholes in using them on the federal land where MacPherson Square sits.
After all, lethality and leaves are a slight difference in letters.
