> I don't believe that Iraq was a 'Good Idea™' and I have zero respect for someone that was there. It isn't like members of the armed forces get a vote or a ch

> I don't believe that Iraq was a 'Good Idea™' and I have zero respect for someone that was there. It isn't like members of the armed forces get a vote or a choice on the matter of whether they got to go to Iraq. I have coworkers that went into the National Guard to help out their home state in cases of natural disasters (hurricanes, floods, etc), but unwillingly wound up in Iraq. Blindly holding such a large group of people with zero respect because of a reason out of their control seems to toe a moral line that would make even racism seem reasonable (hence why you may draw extremely negative responses for saying this). > For me, these analogies were, while probably important for the author, utterly distracting, annoying and disgusting. If you want to talk about the police in the USA, do that. The time served in Iraq is not relevant [...] Then you are honestly missing the entire point of the article: 1) That the domestic police force's mode of operation is just as bad as the military force's mode of operation at its worst, and 2) The military force wizened up and changed tactics to better succeed in its larger strategy; so while the domestic police force is not currently changing, it should not be impossible for the police force to follow suit. It seems entirely reasonable that a group of people allowed to use force on their own community would do so with more caution than a group of people using force on other/external communities. I would argue that drawing comparisons between the two is relevant and not distracting. Having someone like Alex Horton do so is insightful even if not a statistically representative sample size.