Over to you

James "Mad Dog" Mattis is the only current Cabinet member who is remotely qualified for his job, and the only prominent one who has never been subjected to threats, insults and semi-literate rage-tweets.  I assume this is because dictators and wannabes love the military and court it slavishly.  Unlike Tillerson/Pompeo, Carson, Sessions, Pruitt, DeVos and the rest, Mattis was not chosen for the express purpose of crippling and eventually destroying his department.  The military respects him and the regime needs him, so he gets away with a lot -- refusing to cashier transgender troops, dragging his feet on the idiotic tanks-and-missiles "parade" Cadet Bonespurs wants, quietly contradicting the Coward-in-Chief on issues from morale to preparedness.  He has not commented on the "Space Force" lunacy, but he really doesn't have to.

Now comes the acid test.  The latest Executive Scribble directs the Department of Defense to find space on military bases for the indefinite imprisonment of Central American asylum seekers, a purpose for which they are not equipped.  The military would thus be made complicit in the gulag system mandated by the regime's policies.  More important, the refugees would be out of sight of journalists and mostly out of reach of lawyers and others who might monitor their condition and assist in their cases.  Ordinary Americans, of course, can't just walk onto a military base.  Neither can NGOs like Doctors Without Borders or the International Red Cross, or others who might (and should) shame the jailers in the eyes of the world, assuming any of them can still feel shame.

Gen. Mattis must find a way to say "no."  We don't want our troops to be camp guards, and I don't believe they joined for that purpose.  Governors are withdrawing National Guard troops from the southern border so they won't be complicit in this atrocity.  The DoD needs to do the same.