Posted on Jan 21, 2014
Should a military detachment protect our Olympic Athletes?
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I'm sure everyone has heard about the terroristic threats for the upcoming Winter Games in Russia. When there is such an immanent threat such as these, should we send our athletes over with the protection of our military? Much like our dignitaries?
They are representative of our Country and in the event of their harm or capture we would be reacting anyway with possible military force. Why not an ounce of precaution?
Posted in these groups: 
Olympics
Olympics
Posted 10 y ago
Responses: 16
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A lot of good responses below. BLUF: Not our job, not our jurisdiction, potential diplomatic nightmare.<br>
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SSG Burns,
Should the US protect our athletes? Absolutely.
Should the military protect our athletes? I do not think so.
There are many ways to protect people, and I believe the lack of incidents at the Olympic Games shows that our nation and the host nations have done a fairly good job of protecting the competitors.
I believe that having military force with our athletes would be a mistake and could potentially bring about more issues. If we did bring military forces to protect our troops, other countries would likely do the same and by the end of it your will have hundreds of countries militarized (many of whom do not agree with each other) in a small area. I believe that is a recipe for disaster.
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This isn't going to happen. But I'll play along since it's a good exercise in deployment considerations. You have good intent, but it's not well thought out. What's your plan when the Russians say, "Pound sand, you have no legal grounds to send troops here." They'd have every right to do that. Furthermore, they'd be right since such a suggestion I believe is unprecedented. In a sovereign country whose government we recognize, we'd still have to get their permission to send soldiers, especially if they're armed. And there's no SOFA I'm aware of. So that'll get sticky if a US soldier shoots someone.<br>
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