Keeping Away the National Guard Let Ferguson Violence Happen

Keeping Away the National Guard Let Ferguson Violence Happen



Score a win for… tolerance? The people whose businesses were trashed would disagree. Maybe the people who were complaining that the Ferguson police looked like an army are happy now? Probably not. Were the protesters satisfied that they could loot and burn a few stores?
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/25/ferguson-grand-jury-aftermath/70075506/

You would have to ask them.

The National Guard did not deploy quickly enough to prevent violence and arson in the wake of a grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, Freguson’s mayor said Tuesday.

Mayor James Knowles called the delay Monday evening “deeply disturbing.” He said the Guard troops, who were under the supervision of the unified command, were available but were not deployed when city officials asked.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, who mobilized the National Guard last week in anticipation of a grand jury announcement, had ordered additional troops to the St. Louis suburb earlier Monday,

But Nixon had already agreed to play by the rioter’s rules which gave them a blank check. The rest was inevitable.

Missouri Lt. Governor Peter Kinder (R) tore into Gov. Jay Nixon (D) on Tuesday morning for keeping National Guard troops away “while Ferguson burned” during protests the previous night.

“What the vast majority of Missourians are asking this morning is, ‘We see the National Guard rolling in this morning, … where were they last night?’ The law-abiding citizens, and businesses owners, and taxpayers of Ferguson and the St. Louis region have the right to ask this governor to answer some questions,” Kinder charged in a Fox News interview. …

Kinder argued the delay in sending additional troops showed Nixon’s administration had probably been pressured by President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. He also lamented that the governor’s office had shut him out of the decision-making in responding to the Ferguson protests.

“Why were they not in there at the first sign of an overturned police car, or a smashed police car window, with a show of force that would have stopped this? And here’s my question that the governor must answer: Is the reason that the National Guard was not in there because the Obama administration and the Holder Justice Department leaned on you to keep them out? I cannot imagine any other reason,” Kinder said.

So maybe Obama and Holder are happy? I doubt anyone else is.


by Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.