Two pair of people are injured, American government training should be under scrutiny

Two pairs of individuals suffered grievous harm this past week, three of the four were killed, and there is a through-line in both cases that needs more scrutiny than we apparently want to give it. To paraphrase James Carville, it’s the training, stupid!

Two of the injured (one later died) were National Guard members deployed to Washington, DC, who were victims of a shooting attack allegedly committed by an Afghan national who came to the US after working with Americans in Afghanistan.

Two were Venezuelans whose boat was blown out from under them by a US Navy attack, who were themselves “blown to bits,” according to The Washington Post, in a secondary attack allegedly ordered by an American admiral following a verbal order alleged to have been given by the secretary of defense.

What ties these two attacks together is the chilling idea that the shooter and the admiral have something in common — they were both trained by the US government. And we need to ask ourselves if there is something in that training that alters or damages the way people make decisions after receiving that training.