Nguyen Aguirre, a Democratic presidential candidate on the ballot in Guam, was caught on video Tuesday saying that “I’m very happy” the United States was deploying military “advisors” in the territory.
“In Guam,” she said, according to her YouTube video, “it’s just been a whole time where we are fighting wars against terrorism, and the United States government is supporting them with billions of dollars of military assistance.”
Advisers to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump are considering adding more U.S. military advisers to Guam in order to protect American businesses, including small businesses run by Americans, the island’s mayor says.
In a statement Wednesday, Mayor Harry Roque said he believes the proposed deployment of about 100 U.S. Navy sailors and Marines to Guam would “support American business firms” and support the U.S. government.
But he said that the American government, not the island’s local governments, should make the decision about security arrangements.
“I think that is something we should do collectively in order to ensure the security and well-being of American citizens,” he said, citing local laws that restrict U.S. military activity on the island.
The mayor has been trying to draw attention to the growing unease on the local social media networks about the possible deployment of U.S. military advisors to Guam.
On Sunday, he told The Christian Science Monitor that he and other officials had been told by the Guam government earlier in the day that the United States would use military advisers to protect the island’s small businesses.
“The news reports I’ve heard indicate that U.S. military advisers will be stationed in Guam to help keep the businesses of Guam safe from terrorist attacks,” he said.
More than half of Guam is within 25 miles of the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s missile-defense radar facility, he said.
He added that he wasn’t sure why people weren’t talking about the possibility of a military action in Guam. The Pentagon in Washington declined to comment.
In January, an American airstrike against Islamic State in Syria injured two members of the al Qaeda-linked Jabhat an-Nusra terrorist group, killing five members.
In May 2014, the U.S. military conducted the airstrike that destroyed an Islamic State convoy in northern Iraq, killing dozens of fighters with a heavy artillery barrage that followed. The convoy in June 2014 was