I was working in the US in the weeks before 8 Nov 2016, with a large bunch of (mostly) guys from around the world, in a very red, very southern state. Every now and then a local would ask what “all y’all were doing here?” The standard response quickly became that we’d been sent by the UN to monitor the upcoming election 
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THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE
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Most of the responses we got were … different.
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Watching 4th of July fireworks during the fall of American democracy is ironic. I also liked how the asshole townies who run the show played “Hale to the Chief” twice. Fuck those guys.
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That is a suggestion that sounds very well-intended, but misses the context. If we hadn’t ‘helped’ fix the problems in their countries in the first place, then they probably wouldn’t have to have fled narco-terror today. If we ‘help’ any more, that could be totally devastating.
With friends like US, who needs enemies?
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I think you mean “‘helped’ ‘fix’ the ‘problems’”.
Frankly, at this point I’m not sure ‘the’ gets off either.
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How is this not a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act?
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The mental injuries of “regular” Wehrmacht troops being used for “sterilization” duties were what led to the creation of specialized murder groups. Desertions, suicides, and discipline issues skyrocketed after such exercises, and were very well documented by the officer corps who became concerned for the welfare of their troops.
So it’s not just morally injurious to our troops - it will cause mental (ie - actual) injuries as well. (Thank God it hasn’t gotten this extreme - but sometimes it feels as if it’s just a matter of time.)
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It has been the case for well over 50 years that serving as a weaponized tool of the US administration leaves little room for moral concerns, it’s just that these days no one is bothering with keeping up appearances anymore.
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Moral injury is just a fancy way of saying that it will normalize the kind of shit the Nazis did so that soldiers are no longer put off by it. It’s a ploy to radicalize the rank-and-file military. Yay.
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IIRC, that was a big part of why the Nazis went for an industrialized genocide of the death camps: even the murder teams were worn down by the constant killing, so they had to create a system for mass killing that was as impersonal as possible, and offloaded as much of the crimes as possible on select prisoners who were both replaceable and served as a “moral sink”.
Most human beings, even pretty sociopathic ones, can’t keep on killing other humans and remain functional for very long.
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Quite untrue.
Sinister describes the Trump policy from day one.
The whole purpose of separating children from their parents was to hold them ransom for the parents to waive asylum claims.
Couple that with the proposals to end programs to grant access to counsel for detainees.
Your analogy is pretty dire The purpose of the detainment camps for Vietnamese refugees was for eventual resettlement in the US. Refugee claims were taken seriously and the US was welcoming them here. The current policy is purposefully ignoring and attacking asylum claims. It was designed to speed up deportation by holding hostages and denying access to due process plus to subject people to abuse/neglect intentionally. The Vietnamese detainees weren’t in danger of being sent back nor integrated into a prison system.
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WHILE REFRAMING THE PERPETRATORS AS VICTIMS, don’t forget
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Do you work in HR?
Won’t someone think of the poor schutzstaffel!
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I dunno either, I thought it was reasonable conversation.
Really? I would reverse that, personally; I find it entirely reasonable to ascribe sinister motivations to this administration’s policies towards foreign-born people, based on the President’s pre-election rhetoric and willingness to deliver on campaign promises, and I’m tending to re-evaluate actions taken regularly by other administrations in light of that.
And in the lobby/waiting area of our nearby airbase’s human resources building are monitors with only FOX News on during operating hours. Only. FOX. News.
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I didn’t say it would be easy, just that people have varied reasons for signing up, and a lot of those people come from vulnerable situations. Any plan that is simply “shrink or disband the military” is ignoring that fact.
I hate the idea that recruitment preys on the vulnerable, but I also hate the idea of simply pulling that rug – threadbare that it may be – out from under them and saying “You’re on your own, now. Good luck.”
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Killing innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as Pakistan and Yemen and Syria, using drones or planes or just guns, and sending prisoners, innocent or not, off to Gitmo or other torture camps, has already led to severe moral injury of American soldiers. I wonder if there’s much more harm to do. Not to their reputation, at least, it’s been down the drain since 2003 and the Iraqi disaster.
OTOH, I guess that this exacerbation, making the military run death camp-style concentration camps on American soil, shows the future Donald Trump and the Republican right have in mind for the US military. As an agent, not just of spreading death and havoc abroad, but for the oppression of the American people.
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