After a summer of rioting that saw much of downtown Washington boarded up, now it’s the Capitol that looks like the set of some film depicting a dystopian future. Where downtown’s distress was expressed in sheets of plywood covering storefront glazing, the Capitol’s plight is displayed in barricades, fences, police, and most of all, the presence of camo-clad soldiers from National Guard units across the country.
Far be it for me to suggest that the Guard has been called up less as a show of force than just a show. Jan. 6 was an ugly day that will haunt Republicans for years. One can hardly blame Democrats for doing their best to keep the mob in the front of our minds. How better to do that than by maintaining the image of Washington as a city under siege, the seat of our democratic institutions so threatened it has to be protected by thousands of automatic-weapon-toting troops?
My only request: If we’re going to have a militarized capital, can it at least be done with some soldierly style, some spit and polish? Would it be too much to ask the troops to wear their Army Service Uniforms, with the jacket and tie get-up once called the Class A uniform? Instead, the guardsmen were deployed in their Operational Camouflage Pattern uniforms, which civilians such as me would look at and call combat fatigues. Is that really the look we want to project, that going to Washington is like dropping in on Mogadishu?
I would suggest that under such circumstances, soldiers dressed with formality would do more to shock an unruly rabble than a detachment done up as if for battle in the nation’s capital. This is especially true now that the Army is finally moving to make the “pinks and greens” uniforms of World War II the new standard ASUs. What right-thinking person would riot in the presence of soldiers dressed for giving Hitler what-for?
Formality itself would make the troops more formidable without giving the appearance that we are at war with ourselves. Imagine how different things might have been if, as things started getting out of hand on Jan. 6, Capitol security had called over to the Marine Barracks a few blocks away and asked for the Silent Drill Platoon members to don their scarlet-piped dress blue coats and starchy white caps and come marching to the Capitol on the double. The sight of 24 determined marines twirling M1 Garand rifles with fixed bayonets would have put a speedy end to the nonsense. The fox-pelted Viking would have turned his furry tail and ran. And the Marines would have done nothing but a ceremonial demonstration of precision drilling.
So why aren’t the Guard troops wearing the jacket and tie uniforms that are more appropriate for civilized soldiers maintaining a peaceful presence in a city?
A spokesman for the National Guard Association of the United States said he didn’t think the ASU uniforms would be very practical.
“The OCPs are much easier to pack,” he said. “They’re a lot easier to sleep in.”
No doubt — but that worked to the detriment of the soldiers, some of whom were left to bed down on concrete. What if they had been turned out in their ASUs? No one would expect troops dressed in tailored jackets and ties to sleep on cement.
But isn’t the deployment to the Capitol a matter of going in harm’s way? And doesn’t that call for combat clothes? First, we should recognize that the troops are not being deployed to the mountains of Afghanistan. They don’t need to be camouflaged (not that it does anything to camouflage a soldier in the middle of a city) any more than they should be expected to chow down on freeze-dried MRE food while in town.
If we must have troops by the Capitol, let’s at least pretend their duties are ceremonial, dressing them to be part of the pomp of a proud democracy instead of sending them into the city clothed for combat.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
