Why do people claim the military "risks their lives" to "protect our freedoms"?

[rightwinger]

I joined the Corps in 1956. I hadn't received my draft notice but it was a matter of time. Also, my father's Army unit was among those that relieved the Marines on Guadalcanal and his praise for the Marines all over the Pacific planted the Gung Ho seed in me.

I was in from '56 to '60. Peacetime. I've always regarded my service as a duty and I consider myself very lucky because my Inactive Reserve obligation ended in '62 and I thus avoided the Vietnam debacle. Because neither that nor the current outrages in the Middle East have anything to do with preserving our freedom. Nothing!

Further, I have no doubt that if the draft were still active Bush could not have gotten Congressional approval to invade Iraq.

It is not the role of the military to decide its mission. If you disagree with the mission, talk to the politicians. That does not change the simple fact that our military is the defense of our freedom whether you like any given mission or not. Its very existence is a defense, and the people who raise their hand are the reason it exists. Your argument simply demonstrates the sacrifice they make, because they do so knowing some politician may throw their life away.

Do you mean freedom or security?

If you mean freedom, which freedoms have they been protecting? The right to vote? Free speech? Freedom of religion? Freedom of the press?

Which freedoms of ours have been threatened and what did the military do to protect them?

Yes. All of those things are protected. You don't have freedom without security. All of our freedoms are threatened all of the time. If you don't get that you have never opened a history book, or didn't understand what you read.

I have opened many history books

At what point in the last 200 years has someone threatened to invade our country and take away peoples freedom of speech, assembly, right to vote, freedom of religion or press?

The only times in the last 200 years those freedoms were threatened, it came from within, not from an invading force

I misspoke. I should have said read. In response to your question, WWII our territory was not only threatened, it was invaded. The only reason we were not over run was because of our military. The reason no one has made any serious attempt was because of our military.

The reason they made no serious attempt at invading was because they couldn't

Hitler could not invade England and it was only 25 miles away. He didn't have a Navy. It took thousands of landing ships for D Day. Neither Germany or Japan had the naval forces or logistics to support an invasion of the continental US

Now, during WWII, when were our freedoms threatened?
They were threatened from within. FDR and the courts denied Japanese Americans their freedom and the military was not there to protect them

 

[PratchettFan]

It is not the role of the military to decide its mission. If you disagree with the mission, talk to the politicians. That does not change the simple fact that our military is the defense of our freedom whether you like any given mission or not. Its very existence is a defense, and the people who raise their hand are the reason it exists. Your argument simply demonstrates the sacrifice they make, because they do so knowing some politician may throw their life away.

Do you mean freedom or security?

If you mean freedom, which freedoms have they been protecting? The right to vote? Free speech? Freedom of religion? Freedom of the press?

Which freedoms of ours have been threatened and what did the military do to protect them?

Yes. All of those things are protected. You don't have freedom without security. All of our freedoms are threatened all of the time. If you don't get that you have never opened a history book, or didn't understand what you read.

I have opened many history books

At what point in the last 200 years has someone threatened to invade our country and take away peoples freedom of speech, assembly, right to vote, freedom of religion or press?

The only times in the last 200 years those freedoms were threatened, it came from within, not from an invading force

I misspoke. I should have said read. In response to your question, WWII our territory was not only threatened, it was invaded. The only reason we were not over run was because of our military. The reason no one has made any serious attempt was because of our military.

The reason they made no serious attempt at invading was because they couldn't

Hitler could not invade England and it was only 25 miles away. He didn't have a Navy. It took thousands of landing ships for D Day. Neither Germany or Japan had the naval forces or logistics to support an invasion of the continental US

Now, during WWII, when were our freedoms threatened?
They were threatened from within. FDR and the courts denied Japanese Americans their freedom and the military was not there to protect them

Why would they need an navy? All they needed were a few ferrys. Unless, of course, they were going up against armed forces. But they didn't count. I keep forgetting that.

 

[hortysir]

The only thing needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing

 

[9thIDdoc]

When you kill a person you take away their freedoms. All of them. Every time. That's a fact that makes BS quibbling over invasions silly.
The Germans came very close to developing nuclear weapons. Without us Britain and Russia might well have fallen to Hitler who had declared war on us already in any case. With most of our allies subjugated and in possession of ICBMs Germany and Japan could have divided up the US however they wished. And Germany certainly had enough of a navy might well have starved England into submission.
There is no reasonable way to claim that those who died on 9/11 and in terror attacks since then did not lose their freedoms or that trying to prevent that from happening doesn't help protect the freedoms of Americans.

 

[MikeK]

When you kill a person you take away their freedoms. All of them. Every time. That's a fact that makes BS quibbling over invasions silly.
The Germans came very close to developing nuclear weapons. Without us Britain and Russia might well have fallen to Hitler who had declared war on us already in any case. With most of our allies subjugated and in possession of ICBMs Germany and Japan could have divided up the US however they wished. And Germany certainly had enough of a navy might well have starved England into submission.
There is no reasonable way to claim that those who died on 9/11 and in terror attacks since then did not lose their freedoms or that trying to prevent that from happening doesn't help protect the freedoms of Americans.

Do you think invading and occupying Iraq serves to protect our freedoms? If so, please explain how that works.

 

[9thIDdoc]

Do you think invading and occupying Iraq serves to protect our freedoms? If so, please explain how that works

Obviously dead terrorists don't kill innocent American women and children and are done trying to inflict Islam on free people.

 

[rightwinger]

When you kill a person you take away their freedoms. All of them. Every time. That's a fact that makes BS quibbling over invasions silly.
The Germans came very close to developing nuclear weapons. Without us Britain and Russia might well have fallen to Hitler who had declared war on us already in any case. With most of our allies subjugated and in possession of ICBMs Germany and Japan could have divided up the US however they wished. And Germany certainly had enough of a navy might well have starved England into submission.
There is no reasonable way to claim that those who died on 9/11 and in terror attacks since then did not lose their freedoms or that trying to prevent that from happening doesn't help protect the freedoms of Americans.

So you are making security and freedom synonymous.

Fact is no foreign force has threatened the Constitutional freedoms of American citizens for centuries

However, we have openly given up our freedoms in WWII and Jim Crow America

 

[MikeK]

Do you think invading and occupying Iraq serves to protect our freedoms? If so, please explain how that works

Obviously dead terrorists don't kill innocent American women and children and are done trying to inflict Islam on free people.

Neither Saddam Hussein nor the Iraqi people were hostile toward America. Most Iraqi military personnel and virtually the entire Iraqi civilian population regarded America in the context of our alliance with them during our period of hostile conflict when Iran held American hostages.

Further, when Hussein first considered invading Kuwait he conferred with our ambassador, April Glaspie, informed her of his intention, explained his motive, which was theft of oil from Iraqi oil beds, and asked whether the U.S. was opposed. Glaspie assured Hussein the U.S. was not concerned with his intention.

(Excerpt)

"In the now famous interview with the Iraqi leader, U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam, ‘[W]e have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.’ The U.S. State Department had earlier told Saddam that Washington had ‘no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.’ The United States may not have intended to give Iraq a green light, but that is effectively what it did."

WikiLeaks April Glaspie and Saddam Hussein Foreign Policy

(Close)

We than invaded, occupied, and reduced Iraq to a third-world nation, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, including babies and their mothers, and we ravaged their army, most disgracefully in an unprecedentedly brutal engagement known as The Highway of Death. And as if all of that wasn't enough, there were the Abu Ghraib revelations.

So how many America-hating terrorists do you think our actions in Iraq, alone, served to recruit and inspire as opposed to those we've managed to kill? Everything we do in the Middle East creates more terrorists than we possibly can eliminate.

And while the above circumstances might seem counterproductive to you and me they are highly productive to the insidious Military Industrial Complex and the corrupt politicians who serve those interests.

 

[9thIDdoc]

Fact is no foreign force has threatened the Constitutional freedoms of American citizens for centuries

That remains a lie as I have shown.

 

[rightwinger]

Fact is no foreign force has threatened the Constitutional freedoms of American citizens for centuries

That remains a lie as I have shown.

Actually, you failed miserably

 

[Liminal]

The vast majority of military members go their entire careers without seeing combat. The rise of drone warfare means an increasing number of those who do are still risking not much more than a tax payer bought robot. None of our recent wars actually had anything to do with defending the United States or its citizens' freedom. Afghanistan was supposedly about finding bin Ladin. Iraq was about kicking Saddam out of power to find his non-existent chemical weapons and a few billion tons worth of oil for Bush's butt buddies. The newest Iraq war will be to try to fix the problem of the massive army of genocidal conservative crazies our most recent fuck up there created.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to thank our troops for the sacrifice of six years they could have spent going to college to go out and risk occasional inconvenience for our national oiligarchs' bank accounts?

That certainly is one point of view.

 

[9thIDdoc]

 

[jasonnfree]

View attachment 35980

That's right. Only Islam does these horrible things.

 

[jasonnfree]

Fact is no foreign force has threatened the Constitutional freedoms of American citizens for centuries

That remains a lie as I have shown.

That's right, America bombing Iraq back to the stone age (twice) was her God given, constitutional right.

 

[ABikerSailor]

Yanno...............there have been people further up this thread that said people who served in the peace time military never risked their lives.

Lemmie tell you a story about a friend of mine named Tony..........................

It was during the mid 80's (a year or so after Beruit), and we were at home port taking care of training and doing upkeep on the ship. Tony was a deck seaman on my ship, as well as a pretty good friend of mine, and he was working over the side painting the ship. Well......as it would turn out, a tugboat didn't see the "man working over the side" flags, and turned around too close to the ship, and the backwash from the tugboat took and flipped the barge that Tony and 3 other guys were standing on to paint the side. 3 of the guys managed to make it back to the surface, but Tony didn't. We found his body 3 days later about 2 piers over. It may not sound like a dangerous operation, painting the side of the ship, but in this case it took Tony's life.

There are many dangers in the military that you see everyday that don't necessarily involve bullets and heavy artillery going off around you, but there ARE everyday dangers that the average civilian doesn't have to face.

Yes. The military risks their lives every day in support of this country, because if the gear doesn't work, we can't project power overseas.

I also remember a pilot from my sister squadron of VFA-136 who ended up trying to fly through a granite cloud (mountain) while doing fighter training in Fallon NV.

 

[jasonnfree]

I was talking to a Vietnamese immigrant neighbor yesterday who found out I was in the Navy in the far east during the Vietnamese conflict. He was trying to thank me for what the US military was trying to do in overcoming communism back then. I explained that I was a non combat sailor in that war, just a sailor in engineering, keeping the ships operating. I went in the Navy during JFK's presidency mostly to avoid the draft, and to learn a trade. No hero am I.
I told him I would relay his thanks to the Vietnam Vets who were over there risking their lives, and will continue to do this. So thanks guys from a Vietnamese grateful to be living in USA and for what you did over there.

 

[ABikerSailor]

I was talking to a Vietnamese immigrant neighbor yesterday who found out I was in the Navy in the far east during the Vietnamese conflict. He was trying to thank me for what the US military was trying to do in overcoming communism back then. I explained that I was a non combat sailor in that war, just a sailor in engineering, keeping the ships operating. I went in the Navy during JFK's presidency mostly to avoid the draft, and to learn a trade. No hero am I.
I told him I would relay his thanks to the Vietnam Vets who were over there risking their lives, and will continue to do this. So thanks guys from a Vietnamese grateful to be living in USA and for what you did over there.

While your humility is something to be admired, you DID keep the ship running and operating, and able to carry out it's mission. Without the engineers, the ship won't go anywhere. Hot and Dark drills SUCKED, and everytime that we went through one, I was grateful that the Engineer division was able to get the AC and the water distilling operations back up and running.

Granted, you may not have had a glamorous job, and you may not have had to fire a weapon, but you were still instrumental in your ship being able to carry out it's mission.

No job is too small in the military. Trust me.