Happydayz
The US absolutely played both sides in the Iran-Iraq War. However, let's not strip the very real agency that Iraq and Iran exercised in the conduct of it.
What the US did was tilt the scales in Iraq's favor when things were looking exceptionally grim for them. This probably prolonged the war or at least prevented it from reaching an early decisive end. However, this shouldn't be surprising given the events of '79 and what that did to the US's prior Middle Eastern strategy.
One of the side effects of totally open borders is that human culture might homogenize, with strong bias toward the developing world where birthrates are exceptionally high. I think Indian and Bangladeshi culture are both wonderful, however I do not think they are necessary worth more than Norwegian, Japanese, etc.
Lawyers have that nice shield that is the bar exam, but that is also de facto immigration since only ABA accredited schools qualify. So in one sense you're right, the legal profession does not need to lobby against high skilled immigration. However, the reason they don't need to isn't for any moral reason but rather because they can just lock out immigrants through non-legislative means.
And let's not forget software engineers - just see what happens whenever H1-B comes up.
Ref - transaction costs. You have to figure it will cost you around ~8% of the value of a property to both get into and out of it. This does not include the cost of movers. With a rental your transaction costs might be $50 for the apartment application fee.
Nationally a detrimental move with greater costs, but locally they might very well be better off without it.
The standard story trotted out about trade are the steel tariffs implemented by Bush 43. Highly beneficial for the small number of steel workers in the US, but an effective tax on every other consumer. Forgot the figures from way back when, but IIRC we could have paid every steel worker $2-300,000/yr for the rest of their lives and still come out far ahead as a country.
Right now someone can buy a pound of ground beef for around $3-4. After tax that represents around 30 minutes of labor for a minimum waged employee.
It is absolutely remarkable that our lowest skilled, lowest productivity workers, can afford a pound of beef for 1/2 an hour of work.
Obviously there are clear environmental issues here, and we are not taking into account all the externalities associated with meat production. But that figure above, and what it represents in terms of human nutrition, should be breathtaking.
You cannot legally repossess someone's human capital. So the current law is set to avoid the moral hazard of someone borrowing $100k in student loans and then declaring bankruptcy right after graduation.
To provide an easy to understand example why; you would not have to have a legal proceeding to determine that someone wearing a grey uniform with an iron cross on it was in fact a German soldier during WWI. Visual recognition, even from a distance (of the kind that would cause serious cross-examination in a domestic court), is sufficient to make the call that he is an enemy combatant.
Soldiers are absolutely empowered to act as judge, juror, and executioner, and are given significant latitude in determining who is and is not a lawful combatant.
It is worth noting that this Marine officer was acting under not just US rules of engagement, but also NATO ROEs. Those ROEs would have been vetted by the lawyers of all the NATO members, who already abide by some of the most historically rigorous applications of the laws of war.
As for whether Kudo knew anything else about the men digging on the side of the road. The answer is probably not. But, he also knew a lot about the cultural context in which they were operating, and leveraged that to make an informed judgment call about how to proceed. Regardless of whether you personally think that was moral or not, the fact is that it was legally permissible under internationally agreed upon laws of warfare.