When was the last time the armed forces fought for our

[gabeana]

Freedom?
Was our way of life threatned by iraq, afghanistan, vietnam, maybe ww2 but only on the surface but if that war is really analyzed we didnt give a shit about freedom ask black people how much freedom they had, how about ww1, if you think that was for freedom then I got a bridge to sell you filipino war?spanish american war?dont think so

The reason why I bring this up is because I was listning to sports talk show when a caller called how much he despises colin kapernick and how he fought for our freedom and kap disrespected the sacrifices are service members make so we can be free our military doesnt fight for freedom they fight for corporate interest and othet countries resources

This freedom canard is what keeps the military industrial complex going strong and it is not the service members fault but that is how we use and abuse them

[CivicGrief]

1. I agree with you 100%

War is also glorified to no end.

[gabeana]

2. Yup remember idiot trump supporters

Love trump because he is not PC lets try not really being PC and say we dont send our troops for freedom

[Wounded Bear]

3. A war completely about our "freedom?"

Probably the Revolution.

[gabeana]

7. It was actually fought for Indian land

Read the royal proclamation of 1763 which stated that territory west of the appalachian and adrondack mtn ranges belong to the Indians well that upset the colonist especially washington because he owned a lot of land in the ohio valley that was in Indian territory

[Wounded Bear]

10. That, and other things....

New Englanders were trying to legitimize their smuggling enterprises, since Parliament was trying to crack down on them at the behest of the East India Company. The fact that the Tea Party was carried out on an East India ship was no coincidence. That one shipment was big enough to put half the tea merchants out of business.

Southern "Gentlemen" were concerned about the very active anti-slavery movement growing in England at that time. England abolished slavery in 1809 IIRC, which was the year we outlawed "importation."

So yeah, there were several self-interested movements behind the war. There always are.

[gabeana]

12. Yup yup

You are right

[GeorgeGist]

4. What part of 'liberty and justice for all' ...

do these twits not understand?

[CivicGrief]

5. Trump is a chicken hawk like the Bush cabal.

It is easy to send others to die if all you have to do in return is talk nice about them.

[Glassunion]

6. Depends on how narrow you want the goal posts to be.

Our freedom and way of life, our allies freedoms and way of life, or for the corporate freedom to do business in an otherwise hostile environment?

[gabeana]

8. Goal post for me are wide

When we fight it should because our way of life under the constitution is threatned

[Glassunion]

23. Cool. WWII then.

And a bit in Afghanistan.

That's the most recent.

[Gabi Hayes]

9. GRENADA!!!!!

[gabeana]

11. Lol! Good one

[Gabi Hayes]

14. amazing heroism....just ask Clint Eastwood's CHAIR!

I love myself very much

[GulfCoast66]

13. WW11

Is the last time we were attacked and there is no arguing that we had to fight that one.

It turns out Korea was a good thing as S Korea is a thriving democracy and ally but they certainty were no Democracy at the time and were not for 30 years. But overall I think that was a worthy effort. Others opinions may differ.

None since then. They were all about the MIC.

[Gabi Hayes]

15. don't forget we ridded the world of that rotten commie Mossadegh for the brits

that was a good one

and E. Howard Hunt helped free us from the hideous, monstrous Arbenz regime

[GulfCoast66]

16. I thought we were talking military action

If you want to talk all the bad dudes we supported and elected governments we have undercut to benefit American business interest you had best start a new thread. It will be a long one.

[Gabi Hayes]

17. well aware....couldn't help myself

those were two of my bestest favorites

Mkay?

[GulfCoast66]

22. No problem

They are part and parcel of the same problem

[La Lioness Priyanka]

18. the taliban allowing al quaeda to operate freely did impose a little bit on my freedom when the WTC

was attacked.

i think that was a necessary war.

that being said the caller is an idiot, because fighting for our freedoms means fighting for first amendment rights. which is what kaepernick is exercising.

[tonyt53]

26. By the end of January '02 our special forces had already run them both out of Afghanistan.

[Initech]

19. Since Vietnam, war has been for the benefit of war profiteers.

[dflprincess]

42. Vietnam was too

there was no other reason to be there.

[Initech]

46. Yes but at least the Vietnam War ended. Bush gave them the gift of never ending war.

[dflprincess]

49. True. nt

[mwrguy]

20. Freedom of the oil companies

[Initech]

47. Freedom for the oil companies' billions of untaxed profit and free subsidies.

[treestar]

21. 1812

or maybe 1789 - the last time our actual freedom as a nation was under any threat.

WWII might be questionable, but was our freedom ever really at risk? One bombing at Pearl Harbor does not take over our country. Arguably if the Nazis got much farther, we would be in danger. We seem to be preemptive now about it, but we have nukes and there's no way we an be taken over by a foreign power.

[awoke_in_2003]

25. Had Hitler conquered Europe

and retooled, who knows if or when Germany and Japan attacked us directly

[tonyt53]

31. Japan was planning on using Hawaii for their attack on the US.

[awoke_in_2003]

37. I heard that...

Had England fallen, for Germany the next steps would logically have been Iceland then North America.

[tonyt53]

40. That was the plan for Germany. But England, with a lot of help from the US stopped that.

[awoke_in_2003]

43. My phrasing was very bad...

"I heard that" was meant to acknowledge what you said about Japan, and I wanted to add the German plan. Sorry for the clumsy wording. And yes, England fought hard while all we did was help supply them. Weren't they fighting for 3 years before we finally joined in the fray? I know it always irritates me when I hear Americans say how we won the war, as if only our presence won it. It just discounts all the work done by British and Canadian soldiers, as well as the French resistance. In Cleveland, I had a neighbor who was shot down over France and was rescued by the Resistance. He would brook no badmouthing of the French.

[tonyt53]

50. Actually is was about 1 1/2 years after Germany started bombing England.

Until that time we kept the British armed and fed. After the Pearl harbor attack and we declared war on Germany also, things changed. The additional manpower and weapon the US brought with them stopped the Germans advances. I don't think WE won that war, as in the US. But it sure was a collective effort that was paid for with millions of lives. I had an uncle that was a German POW for about a year. He was a bomber pilot. My wife has an uncle (Gartin) that is still on the Arizona at Pearl Harbor. My dad was in the first US Marine landing on Guadalcanal. He was wounded and received a Silver Star and Purple Heart for that battle, which he said very little about. he did two more landings in the Pacific, with the last being Iwo Jima. He was wounded there while chelping clear a path to the top of Suribachi and spent the rest of the war recuperating in Australia, plus six months afterward. My dad's other brother served in Europe as did my dad's brother-in-law.

[Xithras]

58. No they weren't. That's a popular...but incorrect...historical myth.

The myth was planted by WW2 propaganda posters and cartoons, but one advantage of us actually WINNING the war is that we were able to examine Japan's internal war plans after their surrender and find out what their actual plans were. As it turns out, Japan never intended to engage in a full scale war against the United States.

Japan's actual intention was laid out in a plan they called the Continental Strategy. Essentially, their plan was to drive out European colonizers from all of Asia and the South Pacific (except for Australia, which they planned on isolating but not invading). Korea, Manchuria and a chunk of Northern China were to be integrated directly into Japan itself. A handful of other regions would become colonies of the Japanese, simply trading one colonial master for another. The remainder (including Hawaii) were to be spun off into semi-independent vassal states loyal to Japan and solidly under its influence, but generally self-ruling.

Japans plans for Hawaii were simple. They viewed Hawaii as an independent nation that had been invaded and colonized by the Americans only about 50 years earlier (historically, they were correct on this point, and the United States formally apologized to the people of Hawaii for it in 1993). They planned on invading Hawaii, taking over Pearl Harbor, and using it as a base to block American naval power in the Pacific. The Japanese government believed that, if Hawaii fell and American power were destroyed in the Pacific, the U.S. government would be willing to pursue a peace treaty in exchange for a promise that the Japanese would leave mainland North America alone. They saw a Hawaiian invasion as an opportunity to REMOVE America from the Pacific theater. Clearly they didn't think that one through all the way.

The Japanese did study the feasibility of invading North America in the opening days of the war, and they rapidly concluded that they didn't have the manpower or resources to accomplish it (they came to the same conclusion about Australia). Because of that, there were never any serious plans by Japan to invade the American mainland.

[tonyt53]

28. Uh, there was no question about it. They needed Pearl Harbor for the attack on the US.

And yes, our freedom really was at risk then.

[treestar]

30. When did the Japanese occupy any territory?

A real threat to our freedom would have to involve an occupation. A threat to the existence of our government.

[tonyt53]

35. That is what their plan was. They needed Hawaii for their attack on the US.

They also had started military movement in the Aleutians to hit us by coming across Alaska and Canada. We lucked out at Pearl Harbor when the carriers were not in port and no ship was moving out of that narrow passage that leads to the sea. The Japanese planned on sinking our ships as they tried to get out of the harbor, which would have blocked the harbor for months.

So, exactly how does it only take an "occupation" to be a threat to our freedom?

[jberryhill]

41. A land invasion of North America over the Yukon

Yeah, we'd have just surrendered for sure.

We were completely defenseless against an amphibious assault on LA.

It's not very realistic to take over a country with twice your population on the other side of the planet by invading it.

[tonyt53]

52. Pretty naive, aren't ya?

[stevil]

39. I understand where you are coming from

What about the attack on Pearl Harbor. Were Americans affected on our own soil? Where we are free?

[tonyt53]

44. Hawaii was a US possession. We owned it. Our military was attacked and many Americans died.

It wasn't a state yet, but it was still ours. Japan launched thousands of balloons that carried bombs. A few made it to the west coast of the US. At least one US citizen died in WA state from one of them that made it here. Japanese subs also fired on the US mainland 4-5 times. One sub fired over a dozen shells that hit an oilfield in southern CA causing little damage. That crazy movie "1942" actually was based upon a real event with a lot of humor added in.

[gabeana]

34. Japan was not about taking over the U.S.

it was about being the big dog in Asia,
A lot of had to do with China especially since we controlled the oil and other resources, when Japan invaded China and those resource were at risk then we put the screws towards Japan, those stories about Japan and Germany carving pure fantasy but made good propaganda films

now there was a Japanese Admiral who thought maybe invade hawaii and use it as an bargaining tool but that was quickly shot down as not feasable

[tonyt53]

48. Where the hell did you come up with that? Hirohito ordered the attack on the US.

We didn't control jack shit in Asia. That was mostly British colonial control. We were producing all of our own oil then. The only thing Asia had that we needed was the rubber tree. After Japan surrendered, Hirohito tried to convince people that he was just a figurehead. He was outed by his own military leaders that had actually been against invading the US.

You should demand your money back from the history classes that you took.

[gabeana]

54. Here you go Tony

"So long as Japan remained a well-behaved member of that imperial club of Great Powers who-in keeping with the Open Door Policy- were sharing the exploitation of China, the United States did not object. It had exchanged notes with Japan in 1917 saying "the Government of the United States recognizes that Japan has special interests in China." In 1928, according to Akira Iriye (After Imperialism,), American consuls in China supported the coming of Japanese troops. It was when Japan threatened potential U.S. markets by its attempted takeover of China, but especially as it moved toward the tin, rubber, and oil of Southeast Asia, that the United States became alarmed and took those measures which led to the Japanese attack: a total embargo on scrap iron, a total embargo on oil in the summer of 1941.

As Bruce Russet says (No Clear and Present Danger): "Throughout the 1930s the United States government had done little to resist the Japanese advance on the Asian continent," But: "The Southwest Pacific area was of undeniable economic importance to the United States-at the time most of America's tin and rubber came from there, as did substantial quantities of other raw materials."

Pearl Harbor was presented to the American public as a sudden, shocking, immoral act. Immoral it was, like any bombing-but not really sudden or shocking to the American government. Russett says: "Japan's strike against the American naval base climaxed a long series of mutually antagonistic acts. In initiating economic sanctions against Japan the United States undertook actions that were widely recognized in Washington as carrying grave risks of war."

don't want to get you upset but I think you need read up, stay away from soldier fortune magazines and such

[gabeana]

55. That was one admirale quit spreading

disinformation, it is embarrassing

"The feasibility of an attack on the continental United States by Imperial Japan was considered negligible, with Japan possessing neither the manpower nor logistical ability to successfully mount a full-scale invasion of the U.S. Minoru Genda of the Imperial Japanese Navy advocated invading Hawaii after attacking Pearl Harbor, believing that his country could use Hawaii as a base to threaten the mainland United States, and perhaps as a negotiating tool for ending the war."

this is from the book winning the pacific war

[Sgent]

24. Afghanistan

eliminating a terror state who just killed 3,000 people on our soil -- which definitely impacted my freedom (and still does).

[treestar]

27. our actual civil rights and freedoms as defined

in the Constitution were not threatened at all. The government remained standing at all times. The courts functioned and the executive branches of the federal and state governments continued functioning.

When the Nazis invaded France and Poland, that's what it would really take. This is a big picture thing. Our freedom is never threatened; terrorists cannot do anything that would make us lose it. They occupy nothing and we continued under our Constitution.

[tonyt53]

29. You are living in a bubble.

[treestar]

32. What does that mean?

An actual threat to our country is not even possible. Well unless someone nukes us, but they get destroyed in the meantime.

The Constitution is still functioning and we never lost any one of our freedoms. Freedom of the press and all the rest of it was intact the entire time. We cannot be taken over by a foreign power that rules as they please over us.

[tonyt53]

38. Times come when striking before an opponent can strike prevents further damage.

If you stand back and wait for them to hit you, then do nothing because you feel that your freedom is not threatened, then you will be hit again and again without fear of reprisal. That is one thing i like about Hillary Clinton. She is strong as hell and has resolve. While she is President, if somebody threatens to do us harm, either here or abroad, she will bring hell down on them very swiftly and with overwhelming force. THAT is called a deterrent. Leaders around the world know it too. Sit in that bubble and it will get popped.

[gabeana]

57. Where did you get this thinking from

this moronic thinking is what got us in Iraq
stoopid stoopid

[mythology]

60. Do you have anything that isn't name calling?

If you can't actually stomach people disagreeing with you without resorting to petulant name calling, then perhaps you should limit future conversations to yourself.

[jberryhill]

61. It means the poster believes personal insults are arguments

[Victor_c3]

33. I can't disagree with your point at all

I was 17 in 1997 when I joined the army. I never thought our freedom would be at stake at any level, but I joined with the intention that my service would be used to make the world a better place. At the time I saw our interventions in the Balkans as appropriate use of our military (with a NATO coalition) and I wanted to be on the point of an operation like that. As I later discovered, I was very naive to fall for that line of crap, but that was my intent.

One of the justifications for the war on Iraq was that we'd be giving them freedom. What a load of crap that was. I could tell from our ROE (rules of engagement) before I went on my first patrol that building a relationship with the Iraqi population and their freedom certainly was not an important objective.

Operations focused on truly making the world a better place I feel could be justified applications of military force. True, there are a ton of things we need to fix within our own boarders, but we as a nation could be proud of missions like those we launched against people like Joseph Kony and his lord's resistance army. That's a fight I would have loved to be a part of. Instead I spent my time murdering people that didn't need to be murdered in Iraq for no reason whatsoever.

[gabeana]

36. Well said

[Maru Kitteh]

45. My dad and uncles. WWII

near as I can tell.

[niyad]

51. never

[niyad]

53. I love pointing out to these "we must fellate the military for their sacrifices" fools that, if

they really believed that the military was fighting for our freedoms, it includes the freedom to do exactly what that football player, and jane fonda, did. watching them sputter is quite amusing.

I mention jane because she is here filming a movie right now. yayyyyyy.

[mrmpa]

59. Marine Corps Smedley Butler said it very well....

The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military.

I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General.

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it.

War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few - the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

[davekriss]

62. WWII

[HughBeaumont]

64. WWII.

However, it's kind of implausible that the Axis had the abilities to take us over.

Many of the wars/occupations we've participated in were more the purpose of advancing markets and empire-building, especially every one in the past 70-odd years. When someone says "YEW HAVE THE RIGHT TO . . . YER RIGHTS BECAUSE OF A VETERUN YEW STEWPID LIB" . . . yeah, no.

That kind of thinking's for kids and idiots and I'm beyond of hearing this canard. How long has it been since America had or has a military involvement that had ANYthing to do with domestic defense WHATsoever?

What, did the DRV have this massive armada? Was Saddam going to take his million man army over to Washington and burn the National Archive down? What about Qaddafi, or however you spelled his name? Let's go one better in the CIA-created false trail known as The Cold War (thanks, Gehlen!): Was a financially depleted Soviet Union REALLY going to blow up the universe or was Kennedy's military brass fanatically thinking that a limited nuclear strike would actually be successful (who watches the Watchmen?)?

It took a Democratic Administration's military to finally avenge 9-11, but a War on an Abstract Concept will never end. It's not meant to. How exactly is it "protection" when America has over 1,000 bases across the Earth in over 100 countries? We're the only goddamned superpower LEFT. Who needs the protection from WHOM? .