Probably the most moronic post to date
How many innocent human beings has the US military killed during your lifetime, and why is the question moronic?
Those who journey half-way around the world to kill people who pose no threat to the US are moral morons, at least.
Are you one?
Why yes, George, as a matter of fact, I am, (at least, according to you) since I served in Vietnam. However, for the moment, I'll ignore the insult, because you're in need of a little education; it appears to me you've spent too much time studying Marxist propaganda, and not studying the history of the world around you. As a result, what you think is "simple morality" is actually "simplistic morality". There's a rather large difference.
Ever since human warfare evolved sufficiently to require clothing provisions and munitions for the troops, someone on the home front has been able to make a profit from it. Even during the American Revolution, merchants and speculators made money on goods and provisions supplied to the Continental Army. That does NOT prove the Revolution was fought solely for their benefit, however; people (and companies) have profited off everything from natural and manmade disasters to individual misfortunes. I realize you disapprove, but freedom allows people to make a profit, sometimes in situations where the "morality" of doing so is less than noble. What you're doing is jumping from "someone profited monetarily from someone else's misery" to "That misery was arranged by the government for the sole purpose of letting corporations/rich people make a profit". I'm pretty sure the Government didn't arrange hurricanes, earthquakes, or floods for businesses to profit from, but that has not kept many from doing so.
War is no different. I'm sure some companies made a lot of money on all the stuff we used in Vietnam. I'm sure some of the munitions killed innocent people, right along with the bad guys. I'm also pretty sure we didn't fight the war for that specific purpose. Occasionally, America goes to war for her perceived national interests, sometimes to oppose the enemies of freedom, sometimes for principles. Sometimes these may be misguided, but that's a long way from some sinister conspiracy to further line the pockets of "rich capitalist pigs", even if that last turns out to be a side effect. If that bothers you so much, move to a communist country, or a real fascist dictatorship, where there's no freedom for anyone to abuse, or misuse.
Of course, you don't hate freedom; well, not your own anyway; what you hate, is that others are free to do things you disapprove of, including making money at someone else's expense. Sorry, George, the same freedom that allows you to misuse freedom of expression to trash your country, and those who serve her, also allows a corporation to profit from selling arms.
You know, I feel certain that if you had been around when I came home from Vietnam, you'd have been right there, cursing, and calling my fellow soldiers and me, warmongers and baby-killers, among other things. You would not have known, nor cared, that most of us never killed a Vietnamese non-cmbatant, not a single one. You would not have known, nor cared, that most of us hated war even more than you do, though for different reasons. You hate it, on strictly abstract and mostly ideological grounds; we know the sheer terror, agony, horror and waste the enterprise involves. We carry the sights, sounds and smells of it with us forever. Trust me, we know the cost of war. You, on the other hand only THINK you do.
The Left in America thinks, erroneously, that it knows the cost of the failure of national will that cost us the victory we earned in Vietnam. To you, it's simply a failed war. However, the assymetric wars we are having to fight now, might have been prevented, had we finished the job we started in Vietnam. The "victory" handed to the VC and NVA by thoughtless, misinformed and misled Americans just like you, furnished the blueprint for every two-bit nation or group that has wanted to fight America since. Your progenitors sent a message to the world, one people like you are still sending today: if you want to fight America, all you have to do, is keep a force in being in the field, inflict a few casualties, and wait for the Americans to run out of patience and GO HOME. You don't have to win a single engagement,; just be patient, and the weak-willed, cowardly American people will give you what you want. The communist insurgents in Grenada believed that message, Manuel Noriega believed that message, Saddam Hussein believed that message, Osama Bin Lades believed that message, and his successors, and the Taliban, believe it still. So do Iran and North Korea. Yeah, the damn hippies "stopped the war" in Vietnam.....how many others have they encouraged, as a result? More to the point, how many others are YOU encouraging now, with your peacenik drivel? You may not care, but I do. I care, because thanks to them and you, some other young troops are going to have to go through the same hell I did. Some of them are going to be crippled, like too many of my brothers; some are going to die, like 58,000 of my brothers. That is going to happen, because giving in to blackmail, and seeking "peace at any price", virtually guarantees war (how did Chamberlain's attempt at appeasing Hitler at Munich work out?). If history teaches anything, it is that you had better be prepared for war, if you seek to have peace, and more importantly, you had better convince your enemy that you not only CAN destroy him, but that
you also have both the will and resolve to do that. You can fight a small war today, or you'll be fighting more, and maybe bigger, wars tomorrow. The world since we broke the Soviets is a different one; there are a lot of nasty nations and even stateless groups, that atom bombs and guided missiles won't touch; it's hard to bomb them back to the stone age, when they already aren't far removed from it. Dealing with that is not a nice, clean, sanitary, button-pushing affair; it is slow, patient, difficult, brutal, ground-pounding work. You think they can't hurt America? Bin Laden proved otherwise on 9/11. You think we can just buy them all off, and disengage from wherever in the world someone may not want us to be, without consequence to our own well-being here at home? Well, let me assure you that America cannot do that, even if we wanted to. Sooner or later, "minding our own business" won't be enough; someone will eventually want what we can't let him have, and then we'll have to fight an even bigger war, perhaps at a disadvantage, perhaps one we might lose. You may be willing to take that chance; this American is not. Freedom is neither free, nor cheap, and every generation has its installment of the bill come due at some point; it's either pay now, or risk losing freedom later.
Very well said, sir. 
