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How often do we hear the claim that American troops “defend our freedoms”? The claim is made often by U.S. officials and is echoed far and wide across the land by television commentators, newspaper columnists, public-school teachers, and many others. It's even a common assertion that emanates on Sundays from many church pulpits.
Unfortunately, it just isn't so. In fact, the situation is the exact opposite — the troops serve as the primary instrument by which both our freedoms and well-being are threatened.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/hornberger/hornberger64.html
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OP is right tbh. The government used the communist bogey man to scare Americans for 50 years and as the reason why we needed to dump billions into the military. After they could no longer use the communist bogey man, they went right to using the middle eastern Islamic bogey man.
Iranian boogie man is next.
Iranian boogie man falls under the Islamic boogie man. The government isn't done milking that one yet. My guess is the next one will be the Latin American boogie man.
lol bail out attempt thread
DoK seeking refuge here
They started that one 60 years ago with Fidel, continued it in the 80s with the Sandanistas, and perpetuate it today with Hugo Chavez.
True tbh, but they'll start using it as an excuse to wage wars once they can no longer use the Islamic boogie man to wage wars
Playing Devil's Advocate here...
1. Foreign Regimes
Pretty obvious that no one could invade the US. However, I don't think the military is necessarily around to prevent invasion, but to prevent attacks in general (in conjunction with FBI/CIA/etc) and to provide the ability to counterstrike when/if necessary.
2. Terrorists
I find it funny that he lays the blame of terrorist attacks on soldiers alone, and not the civilian agencies. Also, his bias is shown bare in one sentence alone:
Obeying presidential orders, the troops invaded and occupied Iraq without the cons utionally required congressional declaration of war, killing and maiming tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis — that is, people whose worst “crime” was to resist the unlawful invasion of their homeland by a foreign power.
As far as the "congressionally required declaration of war" that's a legal gray area. Second, where's his source for the "killing and maiming of thousands of innocent Iraqis"? The numbers of casualties are quite high, definitely, but I doubt all were innocent, and I doubt all were killed/maimed by US forces. If he could provide some data, that would help his argument.
And if they wanted to resist, they could do so lawfully, by openly bearing arms and wearing uniforms. Then we would be forced to treat them as POWs. By not following the Geneva Conventions, it makes it harder to separate terrorists from innocents.
3. Federal Government
Again, bias rears its ugly head.
Would U.S. troops obey presidential orders to deploy against the American people and take away our freedoms?
There is no doubt about it. Of course they would, especially if the president told them that our “freedom and national security” depended on it, which he would.
I have no doubt that some military members would. However, I doubt it would be as widespread as the author suggests. Of course, since it's all speculation, the whole thrust of pt 3 is rather pointless.
As I suggested in my article, “The Troops Don't Support the Cons ution,” in the United States the loyalty of the troops is to the president as their supreme commander of chief, not to the Cons ution. Recent evidence of this point, as I observed in my article, was the willingness of the troops to obey presidential orders to deploy to Iraq despite the fact that the president had failed to secure the cons utionally required congressional declaration of war.
Here, he shows a basic failure to know the difference between enlisted and officer corps. Here's a quick snapshot of the vital difference between the two oaths:
http://citizensagainstproobamamediab...ath-of-office/
Enlisted: “I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Cons ution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, (snip)
Officer: “I, _____ (SSAN), having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Cons ution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, (snip)
It doesn't do much for his argument when he doesn't even make a distinction between the two.
His idea that soldiers should refuse to deploy en masse is facile as well. Many prominent legal scholars have debated the legality of various orders, so I don't see how he is suddenly the final say on the subject.
The rest of part 3 blathers on repeatedly with his assertion that the military would blindly round up their own neighbors, with no facts to support the assertion whatsoever.
4: The solution
The author's solution is so ridiculous that it immediately discredits him.
.There is one — and only one — solution to this threat to our freedoms and well-being: for the American people to heed the warning of our Founding Fathers against standing armies before it is too late, and to do what should have been done at least 15 years ago: dismantle the U.S. military empire, close all overseas bases, and bring all the troops home, discharging them into the private sector, where they would effectively become “citizen-soldiers” — well-trained citizens prepared to rally to the defense of our nation in the unlikely event of a foreign invasion of our country. And for the American people to heed the warning of President Eisenhower against the military-industrial complex, by shutting down the Pentagon's enormous domestic military empire, closing domestic bases, and discharging those troops into the private sector
So, now that we've pissed off other nations, we should completely abolish the standing army we've had for... oh, a century or moreso.
Let's hypothesize an attack from, say, China. How fast do you think we could respond to an attack if we had to start from scratch? The author tries to make it seem like the only threat whatsoever is "invasion" and invasion alone. His idea that regular citizens could "come together" and defeat a practiced army is ridiculous on its face. And tell me, how "well-trained" would these citizens be 10 years after the military was dismantled? 20 years?
Back when the Founding Fathers were around, they didn't have planes, let alone bombers. If the US wanted to, we could bomb a country back to the stone age.
In total, a very shallow article. And this is coming from someone who is also isolationist. Assuming that the world's strongest superpower could suddently dismantle their entire military, and everything would turn up roses, is pretty much ed.
We already had that one under Reagan tbh.
For the record I don't agree with the notion that we don't need a military at all, but I do think all of our foreign troops in every country should be brought home, and the size/spending of the military should be massively cut down.
I'm on-board with that. In fact, I do agree that the size of our military beggars its usage.
I call BS, the so-called "communist bogey man" was put to bed in the late 80s early 90s (lets say 1991). What was the government using as a bogey man before 2001?
Have you once thought about the repercussions of communism succeeding instead of collapsing due to our ability to outspend them?
During the 90s was when the government began to use the Islamic boogie man, especially after the 1993 WTC attack
Uh, Desert Storm started in 91. That was the beginning of our seeming never ending presence in the Middle East.
yeah I have. Anyone who thinks communism was a real threat to America is blind.
Yeah, but Muslims weren't demonized like they were after 9/11. The average American didn't associate Muslims with war. Like many do now.
It might be more than correlation that we had a time of relative peace after the Gulf War, and also a relatively strong economy.
War is a was very profitable industry back then.
A lot of the "economic prosperity" from the 90's showed it's ugly facade of a head in the past decade as S&L scandals, Goldman Sachs and the others, dot com bubble collapse, Enron scandals and the like. It was smoke and mirrors and a few of people got rich and a lot of people got poor.
Capitalism is just a bubble.
/thread
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