FIVE years ago I was a soldier with the 82nd Airborne Division, based at Fort Bragg, N.C. But rather than heading to Iraq or Afghanistan, I was getting ready to go to New Orleans, where I would assist in the relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina.

Such work would normally be performed by the Louisiana National Guard; after all, responding to domestic emergencies is one of the Guard’s core tasks. But roughly 35 percent of the state’s Guardsmen were in Iraq, so soldiers from my unit were deployed to fill in.

This wasn’t an isolated incident  the Pentagon has grown increasingly dependent on the Guard to perform military operations at the cost of ignoring its other duties. Even today, as a soldier in the New York National Guard, I spend much of my time preparing to fight. Unless the military can realign its priorities, the country runs the risk of being dangerously unprepared for the next major domestic disaster.

I don’t mean to criticize the active-duty Army; the paratroopers deployed to Louisiana performed their job admirably (my own deployment was called off at the last minute). But the response might have been faster and more effective had it involved more of the soldiers who called that area home.