Nigerian Army Uses Trump’s Words to Justify Fatal Shooting of Rock-Throwing Protesters

Well that was fast.

I can't say I wasn't expecting it. I was just expecting it here, either on the southern border whenever the caravan finally arrives (I fear for their safety), or possibly sooner if somebody decided to throw a rock at the wrong cop.

This is exactly what Trump wanted. Hell, it's nothing more than an extension of his own personal motto, responding to any negative act or word in the most overblown fashion possible. Crushing his enemies, blah, blah, blah.

He wants people to be terrified of standing up to the bullies, and he wants the bullies to feel completely comfortable and justified in responding to minor threats with deadly violence.

(Rocks as weapons? Yeah - it's possible. However, all I could think of when Trump said that was how, when I was a kid, I used to ask my older brother to throw rocks at me so I could practice dodging. Rocks just aren't that scary).

What he doesn't seem to understand is that the bullied might back down for a moment... but only as long as it takes to swap out their rocks for rifles, because if you know someone will respond to small aggressions with deadly force, the smart move is to use deadly force from the get-go so they don't have a chance to shoot back.

Mark my words, he won't care, he certainly won't apologize, and it's just a matter of time before the same scenario plays out here at home.

And just think, when the next cop shoots an unarmed man, all the cop has to say is the victim was throwing rocks.

Lyv said:

Considering he said it in the context of the troops he's sending to the border, I am fearful of but expecting to see a massacre of refugees...

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Another My Lai?

Regardless of what the idiot in the White House says or suggests, it seems unlikely that any American military commander would be stupid enough to allow his/her troops to shoot at unarmed refugees. I'm no military expert, but it seems likely that these troops would be under strict orders to NOT fire unless fired upon (despite what their alleged CIC might say.)

Then again, our country is so upside down right now that anything is possible.

MaeZe said:

And just think, when the next cop shoots an unarmed man, all the cop has to say is the victim was throwing rocks.

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Of course. After all, there were rocks found on the ground near the body...

Tazlima said:

it's just a matter of time before the same scenario plays out here at home.

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Lyv said:

{...} I am fearful of but expecting to see a massacre of refugees. I believe that's what he wants.

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Oh please.

Larry M said:

Regardless of what the idiot in the White House says or suggests, it seems unlikely that any American military commander would be stupid enough to allow his/her troops to shoot at unarmed refugees.

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This. The US Army won't be put within shooting range of the border and it won't be armed to the teeth unlike what's happening in Nigeria. No need to. I'd like to think the military leadership is much much much smarter than the Commander-In-Chief that put them there. Then again, mobilizing active battalions to distribute donuts and coffee (in U$1200 mugs no less) along with chopper rides for US Border Patrol officers ain't cheap.

Good things you lots have had your tax cuts.

Oh wait...

What was this year's projected deficit again?

-cb

cbenoi1 said:

The US Army won't be put within shooting range of the border and it won't be armed to the teeth unlike what's happening in Nigeria.

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Do you have references for these claims, because I would LOVE for this to be true, but I certainly haven't seen any evidence to this effect.

Since when is the military deployed without firearms?

cbenoi1 said:

I'd like to think the military leadership is much much much smarter than the Commander-In-Chief that put them there.

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I'd like to think this too, but it doesn't require across-the-board stupid leadership for things to turn deadly, it only takes one trigger-happy idiot.

cbenoi1 said:

Then again, mobilizing active battalions to distribute donuts and coffee (in U$1200 mugs no less) along with chopper rides for US Border Patrol officers ain't cheap.

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See, that makes it sound like the military is being deployed as some kind of mission of charity. Trump has made it abundently clear that it's anything but. He's framed the caravan as an invasion, and is sending at a minimum, troops approximately equal to the number of people in that caravan (assuming it continues to shed people over the next few weeks at approximately the same rate as it has so far). If he sends the upper projected total of 15,000 troops, we'll looking at approx. three soldiers for every asylum-seeker (plus, of course, the border control agents those troops are supposed to be "assisting," and the right-wing militia guys who have decided to wander down and join in). Doesn't that strike you as just a tad overkill?

He's also stated outright that throwing rocks will be considered sufficient provocation to shoot, and those words have ALREADY been used as "justification" for 20-40 deaths.

Bear in mind that this is an administration that literally stole thousands of children from their parents and placed them in prison with no plan in place to reunite those families, so they've already proven that they have no regard for human rights and/or don't consider brown people to be "human."

Trump has brought the logs, the gasoline, and the matches, and he's blowing Santa Ana levels of hot air across the whole mess. His pyromaniac base is falling all over itself to be the one to light the first spark. And you think we're being ridiculous for thinking that maybe, MAYBE there might be a fire?

Larry M said:

Another My Lai?

Regardless of what the idiot in the White House says or suggests, it seems unlikely that any American military commander would be stupid enough to allow his/her troops to shoot at unarmed refugees. I'm no military expert, but it seems likely that these troops would be under strict orders to NOT fire unless fired upon (despite what their alleged CIC might say.)

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That's possible (I wouldn't necessarily hold my breath on it, given how the military seems to lean red, but possible)... but what about all those trigger-happy militias who are also reportedly runnin' for the border, eager to take their leader's words to heart and gun down a few scary brown refugees with rocks? We know the alt-right crowd's got their ears tuned to his dog whistles, which have dropped well into the normal hearing range now, and I'd bet good money they're more than willing to fire where the trained boys and girls with guns (possibly) won't.

Tazlima said:

Do you have references for these claims

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/26/politics/caravan-troops-border-what-they-can-do/index.html

Tazlima said:

Since when is the military deployed without firearms?

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I expect rifles for MPs guarding military personnel accommodations and sparse deployment of sidearms for everyone else. This is a support mission - logistics, planning, transport, erecting temporary structures, medical assistance, that short of thing.

When I wrote "not armed to the teeth" I meant: no tank, no artillery barrage, no Tomahawk missile, no aerial combat patrol, no killer drone. Nothing of that sort that usually go along with a military deployment.

Tazlima said:

See, that makes it sound like the military is being deployed as some kind of mission of charity.

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This is not Iraq. Those troops will not be engaged in active fighting.


-cb

Lyv said:

It wouldn't take more than a few white supremacists or fervent Trump fans among the troops to set something off. It now will only take a thrown rock or the after-the-fact claim of one.

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The US tends to kill far more civilians from drone collateral damage than through spurious confrontations.

Lyv said:

And then there are the armed, angry white supremacist militias massing at the border.

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That's news to me. Got a link?

Lyv said:

Or were you doubting that Trump, who spent the whole election election cycle urging his supporters to physically assault protesters and is even now demonizing the refugees, wants to see blood spilled in his name?

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Trump is a narcissist. His only focus in life is himself and adulation from others.

Sending the troops is schoolyard bullying. Even the Pentagon can see through this BS: https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/02/politics/white-house-pentagon-troops-border/index.html

The Pentagon rejected the request on October 26, according to one of the officials, even as it signed off on providing DHS with air and logistics support, medical personnel and engineers. The request was turned down because the Department of Defense felt that active duty troops do not have the authority to conduct that type of mission unless they are granted additional authorities by the President. Defense officials have repeatedly emphasized the troops at the border are there to support civil authorities and that they are not expected to come into any contact with migrants.

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-cb

Cite for militias at the border:

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/...their-gear-protester-violence-documents-show/

In general I agree that the president is a blowhard and a buffoon who doesn't give more than ten seconds of thought to what he says. But the people who surround him know exactly what they're doing.

It's a massive mistake to shove off the stunts as "schoolyard bullying." He's lighting matches in a barn.

Brightdreamer said:

... but what about all those trigger-happy militias who are also reportedly runnin' for the border, eager to take their leader's words to heart and gun down a few scary brown refugees with rocks?

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If any of those people show up, they could well be intimidated by the sight of the U.S. Army, and will, hopefully, back off with tails between their legs. We have to hope that actual Army troops (as opposed to the right wing nut job militia types) will realize that shooting at unarmed civilians will not end well for the Army.

I also hope that, even though it happened 50 years ago, the Army learned a lesson from the My Lai massacre.

IMO: This is not about giving soldiers on the border license to shoot rock throwers.

This is about making the couple thousand people walking this way from Honduras look like a scary rock throwing mob, the kind one might see with desperate Palestinians lighting fires and throwing rocks on Israel's border with Gaza. That's a different tragedy but no doubt Trump is well aware of the images that Americans see in the US news coverage.

Soldiers are not going to shoot Honduran immigrants, and I can't imagine said immigrants throwing rocks in the first place. They are coming here asking for help. They are not coming here with some sense of entitlement that they should get in*.


*Maybe they should feel entitled given US actions in Central America are largely responsible for their plight.

Lyv said:

It's in the comment of you mine you quoted and responded to.

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Ok, found it. Three activists so far. Between 25 and 100 more may be coming.

“I see young, fighting-age men who do not look like they’re starving. They look like they’re ready to fight,” Marin said. At the same time, she said: “We’re trained. We’re not hotheads. We’re not out there to shoot people.”

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Yep. Those zealots could be a problem.

-cb

Funny, when I look at images of the caravan, aside from some "young, fighting-age men" I see a lot of middle-aged and older people, women with infants, children, etc. Non-combatants, by any sane standard. Heck, how many of those 'fighting-age men' are farmers, teachers, labourers, office clerks?

For any Christians out there, are there not parallels with the crowd that followed Moses in the exodus from Egypt?

frimble3 said:

For any Christians out there, are there not parallels with the crowd that followed Moses in the exodus from Egypt?

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You mean a bunch of Middle-Eastern, dark-skinned people as they invade, maybe even carrying diseases and not even speaking English? (C'mon - a fair number of people calling themselves "Christian" in America would denounce their church's nominal leader as a bleeding-heart "libtard" foreigner if he showed up today... you can't expect them to draw any parallels with their own holy book that might suggest sympathy for refugees.)

For a massacre to happen, several things would be necessary:

- The first factor is time. Trekking through Mexico is a harsh journey, and much slower on foot. Estimates place the caravan making it in a month at least. By the time they arrive, the military will have spent dozens of millions of dollars and the militia losers will have long abandoned it, convinced that they scared the migrants off.

- Second factor is simple logistics. The caravan has already started to divide among the many ways of entrance between the two countries. They will most probably enter a few at a time, at different times, across an area several times wider than the state of Texas.

- The border cities are cartel territory. Even if the entire caravan makes it and stupidly chooses to walk through the bridge in the open, the cartels will stop them and kill or enslave them like they've done before to caravans in the past. The bridge in Southern Mexico was overrun because there's pretty much no border there.

So no, I think there's no massacre happening.

Good to have the opinion of someone actually in the area. Thank you.

Lyv said:

Considering he said it in the context of the troops he's sending to the border, I am fearful of but expecting to see a massacre of refugees. I believe that's what he wants.

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I've been afraid of this too, and I hope our soldiers are more disciplined and level-headed than some cops appear to be.

The GOP might not, if only because of the optics, but I believe he wants it. There would really only have to a few white supremacists or true believers among those troops. Then you have the armed citizens calling themselves militias:



And Trump is still pouring gasoline on the flames.

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Yep, and most of the enlisted soldiers, at least, voted for him and still support him. It would be naive to think there aren't at least a few who aren't among the fanatics.

If there is murder done, I also fear this will simply rally Trump's base further. I suspect they'll be ready to cheer a massacre. I hope there are many among the Right who would pull back in horror, but history is filled with examples of massacres that fueled even more reactionary fervor.

Kaiser-Kun said:

For a massacre to happen, several things would be necessary:

- The first factor is time. Trekking through Mexico is a harsh journey, and much slower on foot. Estimates place the caravan making it in a month at least. By the time they arrive, the military will have spent dozens of millions of dollars and the militia losers will have long abandoned it, convinced that they scared the migrants off.

- Second factor is simple logistics. The caravan has already started to divide among the many ways of entrance between the two countries. They will most probably enter a few at a time, at different times, across an area several times wider than the state of Texas.

- The border cities are cartel territory. Even if the entire caravan makes it and stupidly chooses to walk through the bridge in the open, the cartels will stop them and kill or enslave them like they've done before to caravans in the past. The bridge in Southern Mexico was overrun because there's pretty much no border there.

So no, I think there's no massacre happening.

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I hope you're right, though the thought of these people being killed by cartels is equally chilling.

Apparently just under 50% of enlisted persons are pro-Trump.

MaeZe said:

Apparently just under 50% of enlisted persons are pro-Trump.

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Interesting. I would have guessed the percentage was higher.

Roxxsmom said:

I hope you're right, though the thought of these people being killed by cartels is equally chilling.

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The migrants have hands-on experience evading drug cartel mobsters so they will tend to avoid the infested areas. However the militia zealots rushing to the defense of US borders are more likely to end up in firefights with said mobsters. Darwinism at work.

-cb