***** “any excuse will serve a tyrant.” [ Aesop ]
This post consists of excerpts from “Patrol that haunts me more was in Dupont Circle,” by Command Sgt. Major Eric Chastain; originally written for the Los Angeles Times; September, 2025.
1] “I know the look of an armed patrol. I’ve seen it in Baghdad, in Syria – in streets where fear ruled and peace was fragile. I never expected to see that same look on the subway in our own capital.
2] Chastain sees National Guard troops, talks with one. “I reminded him that the most important weapon a soldier carries in a city like this isn’t on his hip – it’s the trust of the people around him.”
3] Dupont Circle is “..a crossroads of international ideas and local community life. to see armed soldiers patrolling there is to see force imposed on a place built for conversation, exchange and civic trust.
4] Chastain “..spent nearly five years..on operations in the Middle East. through it all , what unsettled me in those places was the fragility of trust between armed patrols and the civilians around them – the uneasy sense that one spark could undo any tenuous stability. I never expected to feel that same fear, not for myself, but for our society, while riding the D.C. Metro.”
5] “What I saw last week didn’t resemble the disciplined Army I know. That should unsettle us.”
6]. “Asking them to police a city is unfair – to them, and to the people they’re supposed to serve. This is not what the Guard was built for. Its mission is to respond to disasters….not to serve as an armed show of force on city streets.”
7] “What was once extraordinary is quietly being treated as routine. ˇhat should alarm us all. The sight of soldiers with weapons patrolling D.C. and Los Angeles streets should feel jarring. Because once we accept it as normal, we begin to accept the very thing our military has always fought against – the idea that legitimacy comes from the barrel of a gun.”
8] “..my greatest worry is that by placing young soldiers in impossible positions, we are undermining the very trust between society and service members that holds our democracy together.”
***. “The shortest way to ruin a country is to give power to demagogues.” [ Dionysius ]
With Justice For All 