Whose Enemy Are We?
Occupied DC #101
When I started writing Aug. 11, the fake president had abruptly ordered troops into DC streets based on a fictional crime emergency.
Trust me, if there was “rampant violence” and people being attacked by mobs (of what?), a woman my age wouldn’t be traveling a couple miles a day around the city alone and on foot.
Now the National Guard has occupied the nation’s capital for 127 days.
One of the messages from Republicans is: We can sweep aside the city’s right to govern itself anytime we please.
While we have not yet been subject to detention, illegal searches, and threats by the Guard, unlike ICE, there is nothing preventing Congress or the White House from changing their mission, just like their status was changed from unarmed to armed.
Residents — and for that matter businesses — are suffering economic harm. In just the first week of the occupation, restaurant traffic dropped 31 percent, according to OpenTable.
The soldiers are not fighting crime. A lot of people feel sorry for hapless young troops with nothing to do but pick up trash and loiter in Metro stations.
But I am more interested in this:
If the military traditionally occupies the country of an enemy after a war, whose enemy are we?
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The August deployment of the more than 2,000 National Guard troops is an experiment, meant to gauge public acceptance of a permanent military presence over civilian populations. It dovetails neatly with congressional attempts in the past few years to roll back home rule for more than 700,000 people. We are a city that offends the White House toddler and his Project 2025 handlers because we aren’t White enough. We are 43.4 percent Black, 12.6 percent Hispanic or Latino, and 37.4 percent White (not Hispanic or Latino), according to the Census Bureau.
And by the way, the Guard’s presence was ruled illegal on Nov. 20.
Less than a week later, a suspect reported to be an Afghan immigrant shot two of the troops here, and one, Sarah Beckstrom, tragically died the next day. The other soldier is recovering.
Citing the shooting, which appears unrelated to local crime, the fake president ordered 500 additional guardsmen to DC, ABC News reported.
A week after that, on Dec. 4, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily froze the Nov. 20 ruling that would have sent the Guard home and said it was considering whether to pause it indefinitely, CNN reported.
And last month, the administration extended the deployment until March 1. Another step to gradually normalize. the military foothold in DC.
The government hasn’t disclosed the cost of the deployment, but the Institute for Policy Studies estimates the cost nationwide as of mid-November is about $473 million.
My question is, why doesn’t the rest of the country object to a standing military presence in the nation’s capital?
End the occupation!
12/18/25
