The Most Hated Family in America - Westboro Church/Cult

[JaredL]

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While this is a nice sound bite turned cliche, I don't think it's true.

It can be argued that soldiers in Iraq are fighting and dying to protect US interests which may be noble, but I don't see any kind of case for them fighting to protect our right to protest. The argument for them protecting our lives seems quite thin as well.

Of course this isn't their fault.

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He didn't say "Thank god for soldiers in Iraq."

Without our military we would not have the rights and liberties we have, regardless of what their current mission is.

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I was mainly referencing soldiers in Iraq as that's where the IM came from.

As for the other statement, I think it's true these days but not particularly relevant to my statement. In the modern age barring a Switzerland-like situation it is necessary to have a military. That doesn't mean that soldiers are fighting and dying for Americans' rights and liberties.

This is debatable of course but the only conflicts where I believe that to have been the case are the War of 1812, the Civil War depending on your perspective, World War II and possibly in Afghanistan. There are also of course domestic situations such as the forced integration of schools in the South where national guard soldiers played a large role.

One could also include conflicts that eventually resulted in the expansion of US territory like the Spanish-American War, the War for Texas Independence, various conflicts with Native Americans, and the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy though I don't think this would be appropriate as rights of Americans living in the US weren't in jeopardy.

I guess my point overall is that if you are going to make the claim that soldiers are fighting and dying to protect our freedom then for it to be correct it must be that if the soldiers fail their mission we will somehow lose some rights and liberties. You could argue that I'm just being an insensitive nit or whatever but I think there is a big difference between being willing to fight and die to protect our freedom and actually doing so. I think claiming the former when only the latter holds leads trivializes everything.

And again, this doesn't necessarily mean that the current soldiers aren't doing good work just that they aren't fighting for our freedom.