“If we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens,” Wynne is reported to have said, “then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation. [Because] if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press.”

Oh no, we wouldn’t want that. Because America is so beloved right now by the world press. It’s nothing but flowers and puppy dogs overseas.

We’re torturing and indefinitely imprisoning the citizens of other countries in wartime situations nearly every day. Does Wynne want to extend his concerns there as well? By his reasoning, shouldn’t we also be willing to torture and lock up American citizens without trial or due process before we take those tactics elsewhere? (I mean, more so than we’re doing already.) Otherwise we could be vilified, right?

And if we’re not willing to use those tactics closer to home, doesn’t that just send everybody else the message that we think those tactics are, well, kind of wrong?

Heck, if you want to take Wynne’s comments to their logical conclusion, we should be plenty willing to use lethal weapons on American citizens, too, before we use those weapons abroad. Honestly, if it’s good enough for the countries we invade…

Look, I’m not saying that nonlethal weapons liked high-power microwave devices are necessarily a bad thing. Or even that their potential use for crowd control is some kind of Orwellian nightmare come to life. I have concerns, sure, but that’s not the issue. What I’m suggesting is that maybe, just maybe, we should reconsider testing those devices out on anybody, including American citizens, before it’s determined if they’re actually safe or not.