Support the Troops...and Everybody Else

For those who choose to put their lives on the line and do an extremely difficult job, I have the utmost respect. The way our returning service members were treated during the Vietnam War was disgraceful. Some time during the last series of wars the consensus mindset has been to revere them as do-no-wrong heroes and to treat the wars that they fight in as above criticism.

One thing that I wish to address is the oft repeated line that they are "fighting for our freedom", or "fighting to keep us free", and especially we owe our freedom to them. It has been quite a long time since the goal of any of the wars that we have been involved in could be considered, by any stretch of the imagination, to be to keep us free. Our current war, in Afghanistan might have come close in the early days. Our special forces went in and quickly dislodged the Taliban government who were offering sanctuary to the architects of the 9-11 attacks. The years since have been  an effort to prop up a corrupt government and to fight against those who see our occupation as the problem, not the solution. The previous war in Iraq was based on at least bad intelligence, if not outright lies. Iraq was not threatening us in any way, in fact, terrorist activity was virtually non-existent in the Saddam Hussein dictatorship. Between Iraq and Vietnam there were a series of interventions, like Panama, the Kuwait War and various small potatoes operations that had little to do with protecting our freedoms, although it might be argued that our national and economic interests were threatened. Vietnam and Korea both were meddling in civil wars that were fought to prevent the spread of Communism. In one we failed and in the other the two sides still stare each other down across a militarized border. You have to back to World War II to find an instance before 9-11 where our territory was attacked. It could be argued that even absent the Japanese attack, Germany and Japan presented a long term threat to the United States. World War I was fought to bail out our allies, the Spanish-American War netted us the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico as colonies. Before that our military spent most of their time killing the Indians.

This is not to say that protecting our nation is not something that the military does and does well, but our freedoms? They derive from a  variety of sources. Primarily (in terms of chronology) they derive from the leaders who wrote our founding documents and designed a system of government that despite individual abuses has stood the test of time. And yes, in those early days, armed militias and armies helped to secure the independence needed to implement their grand plans. Who else gained for us and protected those freedoms? How about abolitionists in the pre-Civil War days? People were regarded as property, and other people stood up for that evil institution to be done away with. How about the advocates for woman's suffrage? Many of the rights that we take for granted were not extended to women until well into the history of our nation? Do you have a job where you have to work 10-12 hour days, seven days a week? Is the workplace safe? Then thank the labor movement for securing those freedoms for you. The list is a long one, advocates for all manner of causes who eventually won the day in the halls of Congress helped to extend and protect our freedoms. For those on the right, the NRA helped protect your right to bear arms, on the left, groups like ACLU helped protect your rights to peaceably assemble, disparate groups like the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party groups, exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech brought the concerns of the citizenry out in the open and helped keep us free.

Without a doubt our military are to be commended and thanked and recognized for their role in the continued strength and greatness and security of our country, but let's not neglect all the others who have stood up and fought for the freedoms that we often take for granted.