It's Creepy

So, there were our soldiers - volunteers trained for combat who had already risked their lives for our nation - standing in the hot sun at the border between Texas and Mexico, being told by Defense Secretary James Mattis that what they are doing was “great training.”

Now soldiers are training all the time, polishing up their existing skills and learning new ones. And, it’s important. In a war, you can have only seconds to do something right or people will die. And, you don’t know ahead of time what that may be.

It takes you a few extra minutes to load a truck, someone 80 miles away may not get the ammunition they need. Yes, it happens.

But wait. Let me pull back a minute. Why am I looking at this relatively obscure event at a time our nation has so many big things happening it’s hard to focus on any of them? 

Well, it’s always a good idea to take a few minutes to look back on things. We’ll get back to that later.

For the moment, let’s just look at the troops who Secretary Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen (it’s a little early to call her outgoing secretary. The President’s wife isn’t mad at her yet) were talking to at their camp in the unrelenting sun.

The troops are there to protect us from a caravan of immigrants, the President told them. And the caravan is real. At least, Fox News told me that. And showed me pictures.

                                     But Don'tAlways  Believe Your Own Eyes

What? You don’t watch Fox News? Well, they showed pictures of migrants climbing over a wall, although it wasn’t clear when the clip was filmed or where the climbing was taking place. Or even why the patriotic Fox News cameraman didn’t just throw his camera to the ground and make a citizen’s arrest.

But the giggling, head-nodding commentators said this was the beginning of the caravan coming to the United States. Nine buses, they said. A very precise-sounding number of 357 migrants on them, they said. But, N=not enough time to say where their number came from.

Anyway Fox said they had arrived in Tijuana by the hundreds (now watch it shrink) and that several hundred got off the buses and made their way to shelters to get food. And, they said, dozens were seen scaling the border fence, and - finally - for the Fox audience members who aren’t good with geography, we learned that border patrol agents were waiting for them. Near San Diego. Which is in California, not Texas.

So, why were those two high-level government officials in Texas talking to the troops? Well, that’s where more than 5,000 of them are now stationed. They are learning to work together to string barbed wire, and move the barbed wire to where it was needed. And, apparently to stand around, but not to arrest anyone because that is illegal. No, unless martial law has been declared, our Army and Navy and even the Marine Corps can not be used for civil law enforcement. It’s in the Constitution.

Now critics have called the deployment a stunt. And doubling down, the president wants to increase the troop level to between 10,000 and 15,000.

What’s interesting is the frank exchange between some of the troops and Secretary Mattis, a former Marine Corps general. He suggested they ignore the harping criticism being reported in the news and just concentrate on their job and their orders from their officers and non-coms.  (non-commissioned officers, for those who were never in the service).

He assured them that the United States has never used its armed forces for a political whim. The military, he said “doesn’t do stunts.” He said their mission was legal and necessary.

But when one of the soldiers asked him just what their mission was, he said that was still being decided.

                                                     A Personal Observation

Which gets me to half the point of this blog, bringing up an old personal memory. Something that happened to me a long time ago.

I was finishing up my military service with a Long Island military police unit, and we had all been called up on the orders of President Richard Nixon because postal workers had gone out on strike. Critics at the time said the call-up of Army Reserve units was a publicity stunt, but the White House said it was necessary. 

When you are wearing a green uniform, you do what you are told. So, there I was, driving a duce and a half (a two and a half ton truck) filled with my fellow MP’s down the Long Island Expressway, unloaded sidearm and baton at the ready. We got to Manhattan, parked at a no parking zone near a really big post office, and the guys in the back got out. I stayed with the truck, with my assistant driver for company.

And most of us reflected on our orders. “Don’t touch anything.” At the end of the tour, they got back in the truck and I drove back to our battalion headquarters. It was a job well done. Not a single envelope was touched, as far as I know.

My own opinion is that it was not really necessary training. And, while bad things happened to President Nixon, it was likely not caused by our activation. I did get an extra two weeks of active duty, and was paid the standard daily rate. Which, of course, was subtracted from my regular pay by my employer.

A victory all around.

                                           And Now, The Heart Of The Matter

Now the other half of my point.

There are about 5,200 troops now on the border. And, they will all have  something to do. You don’t just sit around on your hands in an army on deployment.

But, there is something that your officers, and their officers, and the officers above them do. We’ve done it before, and will likely do it again. Just two words, old familiar words that lead to a whole lot of anguish.

It’s called mission creep. That’s the military equivalent of “when you’re up to your neck in alligators, it’s easy to forget your job was to drain the swamp.” It means that whatever you do, something will come along that has to be done as well.

You are camped out on flat ground? Well, wouldn’t you be more secure if there was a lookout or two on that nearby hill? And if the lookouts on the hill need to be supported, wouldn’t it be better to build a road? And shouldn’t some scouts go out to see what is happening past the lookout station’s line of sight?

And don’t we need to build some garages for our trucks?

Well, you get the picture. Or, you don’t. If you don’t, here are some more words. Vietnam. Afghanistan. Korea. You know, places where our troops serve, go home, and then go back again.

I don’t think we really want to add Arizona and Texas and California to that list.