It is an image more familiar from dictatorships than from what claims to be the world’s oldest democracy: 4,000 National Guard soldiers and 700 Marines marching through an American city – not to help, not in a disaster, but against their own population. President Donald Trump deployed them to Los Angeles without the consent of the governor, under the pretext of saving the city from “violent mobs.” But what is staged as a martial display of strength is increasingly being revealed for what it truly is: a political show of force on the backs of those who are supposed to serve the nation – not their president.
Behind the concrete facades of this deployment lies a different feeling: fear, frustration, and a deep moral dissonance. Soldiers and Marines are telling their families they feel like pawns, misused in a game that has nothing to do with national defense. Three organizations for military families – including the Secure Families Initiative and the Chamberlain Network – report dozens of complaints: soldiers being pushed into a domestic police deployment against their will. Marines cursing silently. National Guard troops sleeping in concrete bays – without mattresses, without clear orders, without pay.
“The mood is miserable,” reports Chris Purdy of the Chamberlain Network, which organizes veterans who stand up for democracy. And Sarah Streyder from the Secure Families Initiative puts it even more bluntly: “Using troops against their own communities – that’s not the kind of national security they signed up for.”
The scenes are reminiscent of historic missteps – like in 1992, when during the Los Angeles riots, Marines opened fire on a residential building after misinterpreting a police command. The officer had shouted “Cover me” – meaning “provide cover” – but the Marines took it to mean “open fire.” Only by sheer luck was no one killed. Today’s chaos is subtler, but no less dangerous. The separation between police and military, between civil order and military intervention, is not just being ignored under Trump – it is being systematically blurred. The true extent of the farce reveals itself not only in the mood among the troops but also in the situation on the ground: the protests against Trump’s anti-migration policies are largely peaceful, limited to a few blocks downtown. The deployment of troops? Symbolic, power-driven – and legally questionable. The largest protest, according to local media, saw National Guard troops boxed in by police vehicles, unable to intervene at all. Their job consists of guarding buildings and escorting raids. The Marines? They are not even allowed to make arrests. But their mere presence serves one purpose – intimidation.
“It’s a provocation, not an escalation,” says California Governor Gavin Newsom. And the image that circled the world – National Guard troops sleeping on concrete floors – confirms his words. The San Francisco Chronicle reports inadequate food, missing toilets, and no funding for lodging or drinking water. Meanwhile, a familiar pattern emerges in Texas: Governor Greg Abbott calls up the National Guard in several cities – supposedly in preparation for protests. But the troops, as past reports show, have suffered for years from overextension and psychological stress. After the controversial “Operation Lone Star” deployment in 2021, several soldiers took their own lives.
The system is shaking – not just on the surface, but at its very core. When the military, the last neutral instrument of a state, becomes a political chess piece – what is left of a democratic order? The words of a National Guard soldier, relayed to the Secure Families Initiative, sum it up in a single sentence: “This is a bullshit mission.” And why? Because it’s not about help. Not about rescue. But about a spectacle that the most powerful man in the world needs to cast himself as a savior – against a problem he created himself. This is not national security. This is an attack on the very idea of home.
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