If the lampposts feel like star shells and the tents read like a forward operating base, that’s because Washington has been playing dress-up as a combat outpost again. The White House ordered roughly 800 National Guard troops into D.C. in a move to augment the city’s police—an extraordinary flex in a town that swears everything is under control.
That’s not just security theater; it’s a confession that the “Capital of the Free World” needs uniforms and rifles to keep the streets tidy. Yikes.
Just the Facts
By the numbers, the mood didn’t come from nowhere. D.C. closed 2023 with 274 homicides, the highest since the late ‘90s—hardly the postcard version of civic order.
Carjackings that spiked last year cooled in mid-2024—June was down about 78% year-over-year—but when violence does happen, it’s getting deadlier, which is why the city still feels like it’s walking on marbles.
And the backdrop would make our founding fathers shed a tear: federal crews cleared the McPherson Square encampment because drugs, crime, and plain unsafe conditions turned a downtown park into a hazard zone.
Not the First Time
We’ve seen troops in D.C. before—from the 2020 unrest to the grim hours of Jan. 6—so the image of Guardsmen pacing trash-strewn streets is already baked into the national memory.
The cartoon nails the absurdity: a young soldier confusing the nation’s capital for Fallujah because the sights, smells, and posture are the same…well, kinda. When a city needs mobilized troops and emergency edicts to project calm, the punchline writes itself—and it isn’t flattering.
