Livingston: SC Guard will be engaged post-Sept 11

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The general who leads South Carolina’s National Guard predicts it will be deployed in faraway nations in the post-Sept. 11 era, even after the drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq is complete.

Maj. Gen. Robert Livingston says the state’s 10,000 citizen-soldiers will likely maintain contact with underdeveloped societies such as Yemen and others in the Horn of Africa, where international terrorist forces like al-Qaida have a foothold.

Livingston says he thinks such involvement allows the state’s Guard to teach other nations how to build a society, and will prevent terrorist attacks like Sept. 11 from happening again.

Livingston led the Guard’s largest overseas deployment since World War II in 2007, when 1,800 soldiers from the Newberry-based 218th Brigade Combat Team deployed to Afghanistan for a year.