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AUSTIN, TX — On July 21, Texas Gov. Rick Perry stood before cameras here to announce with great flourish–“I will not stand idly by”–his plan to deploy “up to 1,000 Texas National Guard troops to the border” to assist overworked Department of Public Safety officers. “Our citizens are under assault and little children from Central America are detained in squalor,” Perry proclaimed. The announcement was widely covered, well beyond Texas, and a scan of the news showed a confident commander-in-chief taking action, a potential 2016 White House contender “bolster[ing] the border and his profile,” as The New York Times had it.
None of that fanfare and attention accompanied the announced end of that deployment, quietly cemented on December 1 by the Texas Legislative Budget Board. The Board approved funding for additional Department of Public Safety officers to “replace the controversial deployment of 1,000 National Guard soldiers” in the spring, the Houston Chronicle reported.
With drawdown on the horizon, this is an opportunity for reporters in Texas to dig in and take stock of Gov. Perry’s deployment: What did the Guard troops actually do? Was mission (and by the way, what was that mission), accomplished? How many troops actually hit the ground and where? What were the benefits and costs of the deployment for Texas taxpayers? Gov. Perry has been vague about much of this: for example, early on, he cited the need for Guard troops to aid the young Central American migrants crossing the border; several weeks later, he spoke of a need to catch “narco-terrorists;” and in late August, he claimed “a very real possibility”–though he had “no clear evidence”–that ISIS might be sneaking over the border. Each shift of mission came with its own photo-op and round of tough-guy headlines. “You are now the tip of the spear,” Perry told Guard troops at Camp Swift in August.
Yes, some reporters tried to get answers and supply context along the way. In August, the Austin-American Statesman noted Perry’s shifting mission, the “open-ended” nature of the deployment, and that Perry was “perhaps hoping to look presidential” in his actions. Also in August, KHOU’s Angela Kocherga in Houston tried to question the exact mission and capabilities of the troops, noting that in previous deployments by the federal government, Guard troops worked with the federal Border Patrol as opposed to alongside state law enforcement. The San Antonio Express-News‘s Jason Buch did a nice job in late August of noting the lack of mission detail from the governor’s office or the Texas Military Forces, and confusion about the role of troops. On September 1, The Washington Post‘s Antonio Olivo reported from Rio Grande City along the border with detailed firsthand observation and concluded: “But now that the guardsmen have arrived, their exact role, besides keeping watch on the brush, is not entirely clear.”
Simply pinning down how many of Perry’s Guard troops were present at any given place or time proved a challenge for reporters. On August 13, when Perry visited Camp Swift outside Austin, KEYE’s anchor reported that “1,000 Texas National Guard troops are at Camp Swift” (and bolstered Perry’s get-tough rhetoric with file footage of patrol boats). Other reports said only that Perry spoke to “a gathering of roughly 100 troops” at the camp, more than 200 miles from the border. Days later, KXAN reported that some troops were at the border, and though officials “would not say how many troops had been deployed…did say 700 were still waiting at Camp Swift.” The Associated Press described the initial several dozen troops at the border as a “first wave”–a term appropriate for Normandy, not here. The next day, the AP corrected its report, saying that the so-called “first wave” was not even actually “part of the 1,000 troops ordered by gov. Rick Perry,” and blamed the error on “information from the Texas National Guard.” The exact number and whereabouts of troops may have been muddled in coverage, but the accompanying photos sent a message clear as day: tough-guy Perry isn’t standing idly by.
One lesson here is that reporters ought to bone up on military matters–how deployments typically work, for example–about which I’d argue there is a general illiteracy in much of the American press (Pentagon press corps excepted). In addition, reporters in Perry’s home state ought to examine this particular military matter, as drawdown approaches. For Perry’s 1,000-troop deployment, Texas taxpayers were left holding a bill for nearly $22 million, Texas Military Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Travis Walters told me in a phone interview. What, exactly, did they get for that? Perry appears interested in being president, and this was a signature episode for him. What it really reveals about him, beyond the initial, man-of-action optics, might just be important.
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