Political problem, military solution

In one well-chosen sentence, Inquirer political analyst Dick Polman captures the essence of a bad policy move by President Bush:

President Bush is sending troops to guard against any further defections from his conservative base.

In other words, the president has a political problem - the loss of support from the right wing of his party - and he's applying a military remedy - deploying National Guard troops in a symbolic gesture along the Mexican border.
Except, that's not why we put America's young men and women (and the not-so-young of the Guard) in harm's way, is it?
The Guard's already overstretched, and the last thing any unit just back from Iraq needs is a stressful siesta north of the Mexican border.
Now, maybe Bush plans to send the Minutemen to Iraq to relieve the Guard. That would solve a problem at the border, as well as spell the winded guardsmen.