Readers Write: Military ethics and immigration enforcement

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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As anyone who has served can tell you, military life is a parallel universe with its own rules. I was several months into intense training and indoctrination at Fort Hood, Texas, after joining a nongovernmental organization and volunteering to be embedded in Vietnam.

The base is so spread out, and our barracks, where we woke to bugle calls, were so far from HQ that we were bussed or picked up in a staff car and taken to the mess hall. In order to get to our offices, we passed through the wide-open parade grounds that were usually empty.

The military way is order in all things, and part of our training was to watch for the inordinate.

That morning, for some reason, I could feel something was amiss.

The staff car was late, and we went to a different mess hall.

On a different route, we skirted the parade grounds instead of driving through the middle. It looked like nothing I had ever seen. Instead of rows and columns and rectangles of troops, there was a mess of people: some standing, some sitting, some with helmets on, some sitting on their helmets, others with their shirts open, others just untucked and helmets and detritus scattered everywhere. The usual still symmetry was replaced by amorphous blobs and random movement.

These troops, recently returned from combat in Vietnam, had been assembled to travel to Chicago to “bring order” to the Democratic convention.

When they learned of the nature of their muster, they booed, threw things, shouted, and broke formation, refusing orders en masse. One of the men told me, “I killed my brother in Nam, I’ll be god damned if I’ll kill my brother in Chicago!” This was before the Kent State massacre, but these battle-weary soldiers knew what soldiers do.

I was disheartened when I saw members of the 82nd Airborne discrediting their uniform and history, booing elected officials and playing the fool for a liar and draft dodger (“Hegseth says the Pentagon has contingency plans to invade Greenland if necessary,“ StarTribune.com, June 12). Compared to the tremendous bravery I saw that day in Texas and witnessed every day in Vietnam, the 82nd has fallen. Perhaps the unwilling draftees of a half-century ago could teach these career soldiers something about citizenship and personal responsibility.

John Crivits, St. Paul

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I am proud to have served in the Army, but I hang my head in shame now over the behavior of both our commander in chief and secretary of defense. Their recent atrocious behavior compels me to share my thoughts.

The secretary of defense continues to execute actions eliminating female officers, erasing information on the heroics and accomplishments of women and people of color serving the military. And his most recent action of renaming ships named for civil rights leaders and returning Confederate generals’ names to military bases tells me everything I need to know about his values. Currently, over 17% of our military personnel are women and people of color make up over 30%. Why would any female or person of color want to join this bigoted military? I am so ashamed.

Our commander in chief has sent the National Guard and Marines into a city that did not ask for assistance. This action is very unsettling — to think that military forces could be used against U.S. citizens. Remember when Trump fired JAG officers for no reason? Now you know why, the role they play is to help define the rules of engagement for our troops. Who is defining the rules of engagement for the Marines in LA? Then Trump gave a partisan and combative speech at Fort Bragg this week, where he criticized President Joe Biden as well as other elected officials and continued to spew his lies and falsehoods about past elections among other things.

I have never seen a commander in chief stoop this low. Our military pledge an oath to the Constitution; it is not to be politicized. Trump baited the troops at Fort Bragg, and his behavior, as well as theirs, was disgraceful. Where is the leadership of our military commanders? I am so ashamed.

Donald Sonsalla, White Bear Lake

A Thursday letter writer compared the millions of deportations carried out under President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden with the Trump administration, incredibly claiming that the only thing different is “who is now sitting in the Oval Office.”

Funny, I don’t remember those other presidents dehumanizing immigrants — categorically labeling them all as criminals, rapists, pedophiles and drug dealers; or snatching people off the streets, denying them constitutional rights to due process, and disappearing them to notoriously cruel foreign prisons. Nor do I remember Obama or Biden deploying masked agents in unmarked vans or hardened combat vehicles, reassigned from their other statutory duties in the FBI, CBP, DEA, DOJ, HSI, USMS, BATF, USPIS, DHS and others, dressing them up in combat regalia and arming them with battlefield M4 military assault rifles. I’m sure I would have remembered either Obama or Biden commandeering a state’s National Guard from their commander-in-chief governor, under dubious authority and made-up justification, and against the wishes of legitimate state and local law enforcement. And I certainly don’t remember those other presidents deploying our battle-trained combat military forces to conduct domestic law enforcement on our city streets.

But then, maybe I’ve been watching a different news channel.

David Pederson, Excelsior

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On Dec. 7, 1941, Adolf Hitler issued Der Nacht und Nebel Erlass (The Night and Fog Decree). This decree targeted political activists and resistance members in the occupied countries. As one German general described it, “A. The prisoners will vanish without a trace. B. No information may be given as to their whereabouts or their fate.” Does it start to sound familiar?

The victims of this decree were called “vernebelt” — “transformed into mist.”

I don’t know whether the Nazis who carried out the “arrests” were masked, but I am quite certain that their victims were terrified. Families of those who disappeared had no idea what had happened. Many of those arrested were never heard from again.

Today, Rep. Tom Emmer really tore into Gov. Tim Walz for saying that Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests by masked individuals was like the Gestapo. Anyone who has read anything about Hitler’s reign of terror has to be making the same comparison.

It has been said that Donald Trump keeps a copy of Hitler’s speeches handy at his bedside. I can certainly believe it. Much of Trump’s agenda seems to be right out of Hitler’s book, and it doesn’t take a history professor to notice it. One wonders if Emmer and his Republican colleagues have ever read any history or have any sense of humanity!

Dennis Finden, South St. Paul

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I just watched Emmer “questioning” Walz in the ongoing congressional hearing to which our governor and several other governors were summoned to be yelled at by minions of the Trump regime.

There were no legitimate questions, there were out of context or false accusations, and there was a lot of frankly unhinged yammering on the part of the congressman. It was hard to not laugh. He appeared to be an angry muppet with an agenda. He did not say he was running for governor in his tirade, but it sure sounded like it.

I hope he does. It could give the good people of Minnesota’s Sixth District a break.

Greg Laden, Plymouth

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It’s striking how some are quick to label Los Angeles protesters as “insurrectionists” yet had only praise for the Jan. 6 rioters, calling them “patriots” and the day a “day of love.” When outrage is selective, and silence follows the causes you support, justice becomes a tool of convenience rather than a matter of principle.

Paul Niebeling, Minneapolis