Licensed to kill

The U.S. military now has permission to use force to defend the border:

The White House late Tuesday signed a memo allowing troops stationed at the border to engage in some law enforcement roles and use lethal force, if necessary — a move that legal experts have cautioned may run afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act.

The new “Cabinet order” was signed by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, not President Donald Trump. It allows “Department of Defense military personnel” to “perform those military protective activities that the Secretary of Defense determines are reasonably necessary” to protect border agents, including “a show or use of force (including lethal force, where necessary), crowd control, temporary detention. and cursory search.”

However an earlier “decision memo” that came to the same recommendations that were contained in the “cabinet memo” was signed by President Trump, according to documents obtained by Newsweek. There are approximately 5,900 active-duty troops and 2,100 National Guard forces deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border.

It’s fascinating to observe that the mainstream media has no problem at all with the U.S. military “defending Americans” by killing large quantities of civilians everywhere from Afghanistan to Yemen, or engaging in actual shooting wars in Syria, Libya, Somalia, Iraq, and Niger, but pitches a fainting fit at the idea that it might shoot the only people actually invading the country.

If the U.S. military won’t defend the border, then it should be defunded and disbanded. Americans have literally zero need for it.