My apologies. I simply figured that an armchair expert should take a back seat to a foxhole expert.
I'm an undergrad in my 20's but I also need to take it easy. Today a close friend of mine asked about the Army getting deployed to separate more families on the Mexican border and I had to respond while maintaining a lighthearted tone over a crushing disappointment/rage.
It wouldn’t be a terrible deployment to go on. You are state side, and you won’t be killing civilians or aiding terrible dictators. Probably just marking targets and building out fencing. No worse than training. The only thing that would really suck is that rules of engagement would most likely not allow you to shoot back at any cartels that might be shooting at you, but that’s not new there are a lot of shitholes in Africa where that happens. Doubt you would have anything to do with actual migrants at worst you might have to escort an agent in to do the arrests and paperwork
The units assigned to the border are sustainment/logistics, engineers (construction), and military police replicating the 2010 National Guard deployment of ~2000 or so. They are not shooting at anybody.
I’m having a hard time connecting UN peacekeeping missions with American border patrol, how did you get here ? The only thing that would really suck is that rules of engagement would most likely not allow you to shoot back at any cartels that might be shooting at you, but that’s not new there are a lot of shitholes in Africa where that happens.
There are a lot of missions where US troops are training up local militias and friendly forces. We’re not really officially deployed there so if someone gets shot and shoots back it creates an incident. I’ve heard some stories from people ive casually had beers with of those going bad and not being able to shoot back at the hostile. The border patrol mission would likely be too political to allow for an incident to occur.
jesus. Yeah I spent much of my early '20s fighting the urge to enlist and then as soon as they started stop-lossing people for the Iraq War I found myself going there but for the grace of God go I. The United States has an unhealthy relationship with its armed forces. Between the out-of-sight/out-of-mind nature of Empire and the unquestioning hero worship of anyone who has ever worn a uniform we as a nation do not know what to do with the military.