On March 18, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio went on CNN and pleaded for President Trump to mobilize the US military in response to coronavirus. “I want their medical teams, which are first-rate, I want their logistical support, I want their ability to get stuff from factories all over the country where they’re needed most,” de Blasio told Anderson Cooper. “The only force in America that can do it effectively and quickly is the United States military.”

The next day, March 19, was the seventeenth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, a catastrophic act of aggression that would go on to kill more than 1 million Iraqi people, according to one estimate. Since 2003, that date has often been marked by anti-war protests, street blockades, and demonstrations at military installations, but these actions have declined in frequency and scale as the years have passed, and on Thursday — in quarantine — that anniversary went largely unremarked.

But it needs to be remembered. As political leaders on both sides of the aisle fail to create an emergency response that can provide immediate, material relief for the millions of people desperately in need, we are seeing increasing calls to turn to the US military and National Guard to fill in that gap. The desperation driving this trend is understandable, but we must not uncritically turn to military institutions as providers of “medical teams” and “logistical support” without looking at how the US military itself is a purveyor of unconscionable violence, from its 2003 invasion of Iraq to its worsening of the present-day global pandemic, or how it could be used to crack down on people within the United States.