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I understand some of the reasoning behind the deactivation of 11th and 12th Groups.
Originally the plan was though for 19th and 11th Groups to be deactivated.
But the National guard has alot more political pull then the reserves had.
Also at the time a valid argument was made as to the legality of Special Operations Forces being in the National Guard because of the law that is the basis
to USSOCOM being established. having SF in the Guard puts another layer in their chain of command between them and SF Command. Another argument was that if SOCOM wanted to deploy an NG SF ODA that a governor could raise a stink about it like Dukakis did with the NG in his state being deployed to Honduras. And for the most part when an ODA is deployed its one of those things that for the most part needs to be done with a minimum of public exposure.
It is kind of ironic though that after everything settled down the NG ended up keeping most of the line companies that had made up 11th and 12th and shut down some of their own companies due to not being able to man them.
Its all said and done now. But damn I miss 12th Group.
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