2 FEBRUARY 14, 2021 THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE 3

BY RICHARD LEIBY

A

s part of a horde of journalists who swarmed Kuwait in early 2003, I knew it was inevitable: The United

States was going to war with Iraq. But until it happened, we were impatient for stories, and the military

tried to sell us one: Pay attention to the logistics. I went to a desert staging ground to hear a brigadier

general talk about unsexy stuff — how to move an army, the basics of feeding, billeting, equipping,

transporting.

“Amateurs talk tactics,” the general said. “Professionals talk logistics.” That well-worn principle turned out to be

right: The occupation of Iraq imploded in part because, although the United States provided support for its troops, it

failed to provide fundamental logistics to the populace, including electricity, clean water, relief supplies and security.

Nearly two decades later and half a globe away, the same maxim about logistics would apply to the Great Occupation

of Washington of 2021. No war was fought in D.C. last month, of course. But the National Guard’s display of

overwhelming force certainly played some part in keeping any insurrectionists at bay. For locals and beyond, it was

hard not to be awed while watching the streets of Washington overflow with a division of soldiers — starting with about

300 before the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, swelling to 10,000 afterward, then to nearly 26,000 before the inauguration.

That is roughly the number, a Guard spokesman pointed out to me, of U.S. forces on the Korean peninsula.

A force that large becomes indistinct, a wall of camouflage and fearsome weapons. Yet each of the soldiers — who

came from 50 states, the District and three territories — had to stay somewhere, eat somewhere, congregate

A ‘Herculean effort’: How the National Guard fed and housed soldiers who came to D.C.

Members of the

National Guard

outside the

U.S. Capitol in

January. Photograph

by Matt McClain

Opening

Lines