Looking Out for No. 1

S.C. Guard right to turn down border deployment

Do South Carolinians want some of their S.C. National Guard troops to spend the summer on the U.S.-Mexico border helping the Border Patrol stanch the flow of poor folks from Mexico and Central America in search of jobs in the United States? Or do they want guardsmen and guardswomen to be available at home for help if hurricanes strike?

No-brainer - even for the South Carolinians most incensed that so many undocumented workers make it into our country. We need our guardsmen and guardswomen at home during hurricane season. We want them to look out for No. 1 - us.

S.C. Adjutant Gen. Stan Spears, therefore, did the right thing recently in asking the National Guard Bureau in Washington to reconsider after the bureau asked him to send 150 S.C. soldiers to to join other Guard troops from across the country in detecting illegal border crossings. The bureau agreed.

S.C. National Guard commanders worried that the Guard might get caught short-handed if a Katrina-line storm makes it onshore, washing out roads and bridges, blowing down or flooding out homes and knocking out communications systems. As we saw in Louisiana last summer, the consequences of a short-handed Guard can be severe. The Louisiana National Guard - its forces depleted by deployments to Iraq - needed outside help to restore civil order and get a handle on looting; the process took far longer than it should have.

True, state National Guard units are subject to call-up by the commander in chief, as happened with Iraq and Afghanistan and more recently with the border. But the primary purpose of state Guard units is to protect the home folks. That's why Spears and his commanders deserve credit for their courage in turning down a border deployment through the 2006 hurricane season.