Michele Darr of Corvallis said Tuesday that she is on the 12th day of a hunger strike on the steps of the state Capitol Building in Salem. She's protesting the scheduled deployment of 3,500 Oregon National Guardsmen to Iraq and Afghanistan in the spring.

Darr said she wants Gov. Ted Kulongoski to explain to her why he won't order Oregon Guard members to stay home.

National Guard officials say it's not the governor's call. Governors have no command authority overseas or anywhere in the United States other than their own states, said Maj. Gen. Craig Campbell of the Alaska National Guard. When the call comes from the Department of the Army, the governor has no choice.

Darr doesn't buy it. She has seen letters to grieving families where Kulongoski is identified as the commander in chief of the Oregon National Guard.

But Kulongoski may be the commander in chief in name only.

State governors used to be the sole commanders in chief of local guard units during emergencies within the state, but even that has changed. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Congress tweaked the 200-year-old Insurrection Act to give the president power over Guard troops, even during state emergencies.

Kulongoski is a vocal critic of the war in Iraq. In 2006, the governor said the war "is just spinning out of control" and questioned the burden the war had on Oregon Guard members and their families. "We're asking too much of them," he said. He added that the continued presence of U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf "is making things worse."

Kulongoski talks a good game, Darr said, but she said all she gets from his office in reply to her demands for an audience are official statements from his aides that the governor is not willing to put his name to her peace effort.

State senators in Hawaii passed a resolution two years ago urging Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle to take steps to withdraw the state's Guard members from Iraq. A similar resolution has been proposed in the Oregon Legislature.

"Kulongoski can do something," Darr said. "It will take a lot of courage and a lot of backbone."

This is not Darr's first hunger strike. She held one at the onset of the war. People then were a lot more hostile toward her, she said. But after five years of war and 4,193 American deaths, she said people are much friendlier.

"I'm holding up pretty well," she said.