Bloggering!
This should be interesting! My webmaster Donn Ha has moved my News page onto Blogger.com. This means you can finally leave comments when I'm especially brilliant (or when I'm not). I won't have to check the calendar to put dates on my posts. Also, I don't have to use Dreamweaver to add posts: I can logon to blogger from anywhere and start ranting.
Today's rant? Using the military as police. There's a new proposal to use the stretched thin National Guard (soldiers) to police the Mexican border. This follows last year's idea of using the NG to replace FEMA. And the continuing police duties assigned to the regular miltary in Iraq.
Being a soldier or a cop is a tough job. But they're very different jobs, and in the US they get very different training. Put simply, in the military they train you to kill people. Police are trained to not kill people.
Soldiers aren't mindless killers. But they're there to quickly destroy an enemy force with minimal friendly and civilian casualties. In the words of our great military philosopher William Tecumseh Sherman, "War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over." So it's okay to fire tank rounds at an apartment building machine gun nest if it will take out the enemy army sooner. And we can send our own troops back to the US and leave them foreigners alive and in peace.
Cop training is very different. They are ALWAYS supposed to use minimum force. Cops are discouraged from using their guns (and not just because of the paperwork!). And even a justified killing is seen as a failure. Cops are never supposed to kill someone because it's quicker. Cops never fire tank rounds or call in air strikes.
This division of labor isn't true in all countries. In Britain the military spent decades policing Northern Ireland and their training shows it. Canada has a peacekeeping training academy that works closely with their military.
In the US the Pentagon has always tried to avoid mixing these jobs, and wise statesmen listened. But today's politicians are too cheap to hire more border patrol police and want to send in soldiers. Hopefully this idea will be killed quickly and leave us in peace.
Today's rant? Using the military as police. There's a new proposal to use the stretched thin National Guard (soldiers) to police the Mexican border. This follows last year's idea of using the NG to replace FEMA. And the continuing police duties assigned to the regular miltary in Iraq.
Being a soldier or a cop is a tough job. But they're very different jobs, and in the US they get very different training. Put simply, in the military they train you to kill people. Police are trained to not kill people.
Soldiers aren't mindless killers. But they're there to quickly destroy an enemy force with minimal friendly and civilian casualties. In the words of our great military philosopher William Tecumseh Sherman, "War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over." So it's okay to fire tank rounds at an apartment building machine gun nest if it will take out the enemy army sooner. And we can send our own troops back to the US and leave them foreigners alive and in peace.
Cop training is very different. They are ALWAYS supposed to use minimum force. Cops are discouraged from using their guns (and not just because of the paperwork!). And even a justified killing is seen as a failure. Cops are never supposed to kill someone because it's quicker. Cops never fire tank rounds or call in air strikes.
This division of labor isn't true in all countries. In Britain the military spent decades policing Northern Ireland and their training shows it. Canada has a peacekeeping training academy that works closely with their military.
In the US the Pentagon has always tried to avoid mixing these jobs, and wise statesmen listened. But today's politicians are too cheap to hire more border patrol police and want to send in soldiers. Hopefully this idea will be killed quickly and leave us in peace.
posted by Gene Ha at 8:20 AM
4 Comments:
Good point! But isn't the national guard there to do a variety of duties, among which is police state actions? For precedence look at Kent State. The more valid rant would be the use of the National Guard as soldiers, which hasn't historically been the role of the National Guard. It's a role which our Guardsmen and Guardswomen most likely didn't sign up for.
Bout time you got on a blog feed. I have been waiting patiently to comment. :P
Been a fan of yours since "The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix." You absolutely stunned me with the rich backgrounds and detailed environments.
Testing, testing...
I think I've finally got this blogger interface down! Just had to tweak another setting.
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