More US troops in Washington for Biden inauguration than Iraq and Afghanistan

• Following the siege of the Capitol, security was tightened in the nation’s capital.
• There will be at least 10,000 National Guard troops in Washington, DC, by Saturday.
• The US military footprint in Washington for President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration will be greater than the number of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.
• The increased presence of troops in Washington is a stark reminder of the growing threat of domestic terrorism and the fact that it outweighs the dangers of foreign extremism in the United States.
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The U.S. military will have a larger footprint in the nation’s capital by this weekend than the total number of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.

There will be at least 10,000 National Guard troops in Washington, DC, by Saturday to beef up security ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20. By comparison, as of January 15, there will be approximately 2,500 US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively (approximately 5,000 in total).

There are currently 6,200 National Guard troops in Washington, and National Guard Bureau chief Gen. Daniel Hokanson has said he has permission to deploy up to 15,000 troops to Washington for the ‘inauguration. There are major security concerns for the inauguration following the pro-Trump siege on Capitol Hill on Jan.6, which left five dead and sent shockwaves across the country.

The fact that there will be more troops in Washington than in the two countries that have in many ways been the main battlegrounds in the US government’s global war on terror is a stark reminder that local extremism is an issue. greater threat to the United States than foreign terrorism.

In the post 9/11 world, the US government has overwhelmingly treated overseas terrorism as the greatest threat to the homeland, but the country appears to be changing direction.

In October, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report warning that violent white supremacy would remain the “country’s most persistent and deadly threat.”

“Foreign terrorist organizations will continue to call for attacks on the homeland but will likely remain limited in their ability to lead such plots over the next year,” the report adds.

Law enforcement in the United States has adopted this tone more and more in recent years, especially following the deadly neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017.

“The majority of the domestic terrorism cases we have investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacy, but that also includes other things,” FBI Director Christopher A. Wray told Congress. in July 2019.

Likewise, Wray told Congress in September 2020 that “racist-motivated violent extremism,” primarily on the part of white supremacists, accounted for the bulk of national terrorist threats.

And when it comes to jihadism, the threat was also of a disproportionate domestic nature in the years following the 9/11 attacks. As the New America think tank puts it: “Far from being foreign infiltrators, the vast majority of jihadist terrorists in the United States are US citizens or legal residents.”

The events of January 6, which Biden and many lawmakers and congressional experts have called domestic terrorism, could mark an inflection point in the way the United States approaches extremism.

A predominantly white, pro-Trump crowd, filled with members or supporters of extreme right-wing extremist groups, stormed the U.S. Capitol with apparent intentions to harm lawmakers and even Vice President Mike Pence. It represented a direct attack on American democracy and an unprecedented event in American history.

Lawmakers in Congress are now calling on the United States to treat domestic terrorism as an existential threat to the country and its political system.

“The post-9/11 era is over. The greatest threat to national security right now is our internal division. The threat of internal terrorism. The polarization that threatens our democracy. If we don’t reconnect our two Americas, threats must not come from outside, ”Democratic Representative Elissa Slotkin, former CIA analyst and Pentagon official, said via Twitter after the siege of the Capitol.