Armed troops in D.C. can't become our new normal

AMERICA, YOUR FRONT yard has been militarized. Yet residents and visitors there hardly pay the troops any mind.

- JACKIE CALMES COLUMNIST

KENT NISHIMURA Getty Images

TRUMP DEPLOYED more than 2,200 National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., at an estimated cost of $1 million a day.

It's the normalization of excessive federal force under President Trump, just seven months into his reign.

America's Front Yard is what the National Park Service calls the National Mall, the grassy expanse that knits together the neighborhood that's home to the U.S. Capitol and the iconic monuments to Presidents Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt; veterans of World War II, Vietnam and Korea; and Martin Luther King Jr.

For decades I jogged here (one morning literally running into Jimmy Carter). I introduced friends and family to the Mall's delights and the museums that open onto it. I attended festivals, concerts and Fourth of July fireworks displays. On a gorgeous, sunny Labor Day this year, I returned. And for the first time, I saw armed, camo-clad soldiers among the tourists.

As I left the World War II memorial, five soldiers emerged nearby, marching in single-line formation to join about two dozen more beside three vans under trees near the Reflecting Pool. At the pool's opposite end, nearer the Lincoln Memorial, another dozen soldiers milled. Tourists mostly ignored the shows of force, except for the two park policemen on horseback along separate sides of the Reflecting Pool. Tourists wanted photos with them.

As I approached the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, five more soldiers circled a statue dedicated to women who served in Vietnam. The men studied the sculpted figures and read the inscriptions - just like tourists.

"They're bored," a park ranger told me. "They'd rather be home with their families."