By Donald V. Watkins
©Copyrighted and Published on November 1, 2018
President Donald J. Trump has authorized some 15,000 U.S. troops that have been dispatched to the Southern border to turn back a caravan of 7,000 migrant men, women, and children from Central America to shoot-to-kill any migrant who throws rocks at them. Prior to Trump, no U.S. president has ever authorized the use of deadly force in this circumstance.
Trump has used every opportunity to vilify and dehumanize the caravan of migrants. He has labeled them as “gang members”, “terrorists”, “thugs” and “drug dealers”, without offering any evidence to support these claims.
With each passing day, Donald J. Trump has escalated his hate speech against migrants of color, many of whom are innocent men, women, and children fleeing gang violence and abject poverty in their countries.
Today, Trump announced that he has authorized U.S. soldiers to shoot unarmed migrants seeking political asylum at the Southern U. S. border. In doing so, Trump has scripted an “Edmund Pettus Bridge” moment that makes Alabama Governor George Wallace’s “Bloody Sunday” beatings of civil rights protesters in 1965 look like a mild-mannered crowd control police exercise.
Trump is preparing to inflict extreme violence upon these migrants. All one of the migrants has to do to trigger this violent response is throw a rock at a U.S. soldier.
George Wallace chose a similar path when he ordered state troopers to brutally attack unarmed and peaceful civil rights marchers in 1965 at the base of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. However, George Wallace never authorized his state troopers to use deadly force against the innocent marchers.
Trump’s shoot-to-kill authorization should not surprise anyone. Trump idolizes Presidents Rodrigo Duterte (Philippines), Kim Jong-un (North Korea), and Vladimir Putin (Russia). These despots are murderous dictators who slaughter people as a strongman governance tool and who experience no repercussions for these actions.
Because Trump emulates the tactics of the world’s most notorious despots, his scripted border confrontation is expected to resemble a modern-day version of the “Mỹ Lai Massacre” where U.S. Army soldiers murdered between 347 and 504 unarmed men, women, and children on March 16, 1968 in Sơn Tjnh District, South Vietnam on direct orders from Lieutenant William Calley, Jr., a platoon leader in the U.S. Army's C Company.
We must all remember that Trump bragged during the 2016 presidential campaign that: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters." He actually believes this statement.
Trump's shoot-to-kill authorization is meant to give him “street” credibility with his fellow despots. This is the primary reason why Trump's authorized use of deadly force is directed at helpless migrant men, women, and children of color. In Trump's warped and bigoted mind, his authorized massacre has to be bigger, bolder, and bloodier than the “Mỹ Lai Massacre.”
In Donald Trump’s world, all forms of evil are on the table when it comes to his dealings with women, Jews, gays, transgender Americans, Muslims, and people of color, whether African-American citizens or immigrants.
There is no "check and balance" system inside of our national government, or inside the Republican Party, or in the Evangelical Christian community that will check Trump's evil conduct. They all seem to look the other way as they struggle to normalize his fits of evil.
PHOTO: Victims of the March 16, 1968 "Mỹ Lai Massacre."
