Be very careful in deciding who is your enemy

Learning a lesson from a Border Patrol agent.

In the rush to increase news coverage of the separation of families at the US border, many journalists (and their editors) have crammed like college students to appear knowledgeable and on point about the topic.

That can be misleading.

In any story as complicated as this one, it is important to take no shortcuts, park your assumptions at the door and dig even harder for the facts.

Case in point: "Family separations are new."

They are not, as NPR correspondent Michel Martin uncovered in her interview Saturday with Terence Shigg, spokesperson for the Border Agents union in the San Diego area (listen to it here).

Shigg pointed out that separation has gone on for a long time in enforcing the current laws. What has changed is the vastly larger scale since Attorney General Sessions has decided to pursue criminal (rather than misdemeanor) charges for all who make unauthorized entry -- including asylum seekers.

He also points out that after the surge of unaccompanied minors in 2014 -- who were being held in prison cells -- it was the Boarder Agents union that pressed the government to provide the better, more open group accommodations in which the current migrants are being housed.

Further, he points out that instead of the woolen blankets which were provided when prison cells were used (which quickly became infested with fleas, ticks and other vermin which proceeded to spread throughout the facilities), the "space blankets" shown in news cips actually keep down the vermin problem and furthermore are disposable.

So, it pays to dig deeper.

This is especially clear when Shigg reaches his final point: the portrayal of the Border Agents ina negative light.

He points out that often enough the agents themselves are the front line in providing care and comfort to the detainees -- for which they go unnoticed and unthanked.

This is a lesson I learned well during the Vietnam War era.

Having been in the Air Force in the early 60s, I came to the anti-war movement through the civil rights and Black Power struggles.

Believing that the Vietnam War was not only mistaken policy but essentially unwinnable against a people fighting for their independence (as in the American War for Independence), I was a leader in a local anti-war coalition.

From the very outset we included the broadest range of groups and individuals -- including many WWII vets and their spouses.

And the earliest decision we made was that the enlisted men and women (mostly restricted to the medical corps) were not the "enemy" of the antiwar movement.

They, like the rest of us, were caught up in the maw of a machine over which we appeared to have no control and which was not interested in hearing alternative views.

Service members were thus treated with respect, offered counseling if they needed it, and a welcome place to relax unwind while home on leave.

It was many of these service members -- especially Black and brown -- who saw more clearly the racism and chicanery involved in the war and passively resisted it.

Toward the end of the war, that sort of approach made a difference as US troops began to refuse en masse to go on foolish and suicidal missions to the point that the unreliabililty of US ground troops became a major factor in the US government deciding to pull the plug.

It pains me to hear veteran John Pritchard at City Council meetings recite the harsh treatment that veterans received upon coming home to Plainfield. That is not my story, but I realize it was in many places.

Now is the time to see that we don't fall into the same pit as we learn more about the border family separations issue and formulate ways and means to oppose it.

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 -- Dan Damon [ follow ]

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