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Ring in the New Year with Thanks to Our Guard Members

Thursday, March 12, 2009

No matter where you grew up in the United States, you probably at one time or another watched the ball drop on New Year's Eve in New York's Time Square. Dick Clark has long since been replaced by new MCs, but there's still something special about the celebration.

After the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, there have been annual concerns that such a large gathering of people in New York is a tempting target for terrorists. The good new is that eight years later, thanks to federal police agencies, the New York Police Department and members of the New York National Guard, another end-of-year celebration has come and gone safely.

This past year New York Gov. David Paterson sent members of the New York Army and Air National Guard to assist city authorities with security, as well as standing by in case any emergency situation arose.

Guard Soldiers and Airmen conducted increased security operations at Penn Station, the PATH terminal, and LaGuardia and JFK airports, in conjunction with Port Authority personnel from both New York and New Jersey.

One of the units that were ready to respond was the National Guard's 2nd Civil Support Team, a full-time rapid response element that detects chemical, biological or radiological hazards. The 22-man detachment from Schenectady, N.Y., has worked with counter terrorism elements in the New York PD since 2000.

At the New York National Guard headquarters in Latham, N.Y., staff representatives manned and operated the National Guard's Joint Operations Center over the New Year to ensure that all was peaceful. The Guard also provided liaison officers to the NYS Emergency Management Office and the New York City Police Departments.
And while party-goers dancing among the confetti and rock music may have not appreciated all the security precautions that the New York Guard and NYPD provided, the men and women who provided that security got their "thank you" in the form of a joyful end to 2008 and peaceful beginning to 2009.

And it is important for Americans to appreciate that during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Guard Soldiers and Airmen have paid a high price in both lost lives and time away from family and their civilian careers.

While the help the Guard personnel provided for the people of New York on New Year's Eve is more a traditional Guard role (i.e. responding to the needs of the Governor), Guard members have been deploying to combat zones at the behest of the federal government in numbers not seen since the wars in Vietnam and Korea.

While Guard members certainly understand that there is always the potential to be "activated" and sent overseas on 12-month deployments, this sacrifice has been asked of Guard members more and more frequently as the Wars in the Middle East continue. Many Guard members have sacrificed their civilian careers and time with growing families to serve their nation abroad.

During this New Year, Americans should be particularly grateful for both the domestic, as well as the international service, that Guard members have given the people of the United States since 2001.

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