The "caravan" was all Donald Trump wanted to talk about in the final weeks of the midterms. Trump promised an "invasion" full of "criminals and unknown Middle Easterners" who were prepared to "violently overrun" the Southwest border.
He ordered active-duty service members to the border forthwith, some 5,800 of them, the week before Election Day and warned the migrants along with "Many Gang Members and some very bad people" that "our Military is waiting for you!"
Then the troops—after a week spent laying concertina wire and other barriers at the border to help prevent passage—started coming home earlier this week, "just as some of those migrants are beginning to arrive," reported Politico.
All the deployed service members are reportedly expected to be home by Christmas, but many of them won't be with their families this Thanksgiving Day due solely to the political stunt by the nation's commander-in-chief. Trump treated U.S. service members like pawns on his political chess board, and the whole thing was bogus from the start.
In previous cases in which the military deployed to beef up security at the border, the forces consisted of part-time National Guard troops under the command of state governors who backed up U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other law enforcement agencies.
But the newly deployed troops, most of them unarmed and from support units, come from the active-duty military, a concession the Pentagon made after Trump insisted that the deployment include "not just the National Guard."
The Department of Homeland Security even requested armed forces but the Pentagon rejected it.
This is what happens when a mad man holds the power to do whatever he wants—everyone else pays the price. In this case, that price was paid by the women and men who signed up to protect and defend this country. What a travesty.