First, I want to make it absolutely clear that this is a serious thread. I'm not trying to be controversial, this is what I truly believe. Inevitably, it's going to offend some people with friend or family ties to any applicable country's military or who are/were in the military themselves. Why are we constantly told that the military is "fighting for our freedom"? Given the conflicts we were recently or are currently engaged in, this doesn't appear to be the case. I can understand "fighting for our country", although the link is still tenuous and is never likely to have any significant outcome anyway. But "fighting for our freedom" is truly laughable. First, who decides how much freedom we have? The answer is, of course, the government. They pass laws telling us what we can and can't do, and in many situations even when those things are completely harmless. So the same entity which is doing the most to fight against our freedom is in charge of the troops who, they tell us, are fighting for our freedom? OK then... If the military really was "fighting for our freedom", they wouldn't be in the Middle East, or anywhere near it. They would be here fighting against our governments, protesting against the legislation they enact to unwittingly make a mockery of their own propaganda!
There are a lot of tag lines used by the government that allows them to convince the civilians that military force is justified, like 'national security'.
The people can change anything about the country they want if enough of us get behind it. Its how we got out of Vietnam. As for fighting for freedom I believe you are overlooking an important factor. Our constant use of military assets shows the world that we are not afraid to go to war or send our troops wherever they need to go. It is a very strong deterrent against direct attacks against us. We have no idea how many groups or countries have taken attack plans off the table because they know they will get hit back and hit back hard. When Pearl Harbor happened we were very isolationist and the country was against getting involved in Europe. It is unclear whether this was a factor in Japan's decision to attack or not but it certainly didn't help persuade them not too. If we had been at full alert with fleets all around the Pacific I doubt if they would have tried it. Going to war in Iraq does not directly affect our freedom but its consequences in instilling the fear that we will attack at the slightest provocation probably does. You are less likely to cut across some guys lawn if you know there's an attack dog in there compared to a dog that just lies around and doesn't move when you get close.
sometimes our individual liberties are taken right here at home. If you want to fight for freedoms then write your senate rep. Dont count on obama to follow through with the veto threat. I hope he does but he has proven a liar already when it comes to veto threats. US House passes controversial cyber security bill WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives passed legislation protecting US businesses and agencies from cyber-attacks, a measure that critics say erodes civil liberties by allowing firms to onpass private data. The Republican-controlled chamber defied a veto threat by the White House to pass the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) in a 248-162 vote. Its fate is less assured in the Democratically controlled Senate, but supporters like House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers said it was vital to shore up computer systems woefully vulnerable to outside attack. "We can't stand by and do nothing as US companies are hemorrhaging from the cyber-looting coming from nation states like China and Russia," Rogers said. Reaction to the bill, which would allow private companies to exchange confidential personal information with the federal government, was mixed. "Without question, the path to the House vote wasn't an easy one," said Dean Garfield, chief executive of the Information Technology Industry Council, a leading technology trade association. "But, at the end of the day, we have legislation that would markedly improve our country's cyber defenses and enhance our citizens' safety." CISPA is reportedly endorsed by Facebook and Microsoft as well as communication giants Verizon and AT&T. But President Barack Obama's White House said the bill "lacks sufficient limitations on the sharing of personally identifiable information between private entities and does not contain adequate oversight or accountability measures necessary to ensure that the data is used only for appropriate purposes." Texas Republican Joe Barton voted no because the bill "does not protect the privacy of the individual American citizen," and erosions of such civil liberties are "a greater threat to democracy and liberty than the cyber threat is to America." Digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation said such "vaguely-worded cybersecurity bills" effectively allow companies to bypass existing law, spy on communications and pass sensitive personal data to the government. "We will not stand idly by as the basic freedoms to read and speak online without the shadow of government surveillance are endangered by such overbroad legislative proposals," said Rainey Reitman, EFF Activism Director. Members of the online "hacktivist" group took to Twitter to voice opposition to the bill. "#CISPA has only passed the House. The fight is still on," Anonymous said on Twitter account @youranonnews. http://www.google.com/hostednews/af...ocId=CNG.5511f0505362aabe4b4882176ee038ca.271
National Security Agency Whistleblower: The NSA is Lying–U.S. Government Has Copies of Most of Your Emails [video=youtube_share;eaTv5MODnBk]http://youtu.be/eaTv5MODnBk[/video] In his first television interview since he resigned from the National Security Agency over its domestic surveillance program, William Binney discusses the NSA's massive power to spy on Americans and why the FBI raided his home after he became a whistleblower. Binney was a key source for investigative journalist James Bamford's recent exposé in Wired Magazine about how the NSA is quietly building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah. The Utah spy center will contain near-bottomless databases to store all forms of communication collected by the agency including private emails, cell phone calls and Google searches and other personal data. Binney served in the NSA for over 30 years, including a time as technical director of the NSA's World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group. Since retiring from the NSA in 2001 he has warned that the NSA's data-mining program has become so vast that it could "create an Orwellian state." Today marks the first time Binney has spoken on national television about NSA surveillance. http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/whistleblower_the_nsa_is_lying_us
We have only fought two wars for our own freedom, the first was the revolutionary war, and the second was the civil war. Every other war we have fought has been for wealth and financial advantage by way of treaties. The sad truth is we have very little "freedom" left to fight for. Our freedom and liberty have been taken piece by piece by our own government and their corporate owners until today there is almost no freedom left in America at all. America today is much like the rest of the world in which you only get as much freedom as you can afford. Money = Freedom.
The argument that mucking about in other parts of the world somehow provides a deterrent seems a bit...nonsensical. I mean, it's not like having a huge land mass, being separated by an ocean from any other major military power and having by far the biggest military budget in the whole world isn't enough of a deterrent. You cannot seriously believe that anyone has ever had any plans of a military invasion of the continental United States that were squashed simply because the US has played world police. If someone seriously contemplates invading a whole freakin' continent, you're not gonna scare them away with some posturing.
The War Between the States was not about any person's freedom. It was about the rights of the individual states. The portion of state's rights that set off the war involved slavery, but slavery was not the issue. Lincoln said that if he keeping all the Blacks enslaved would have kept the union whole, that's what he would have done. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Korea. Explain the economic issues in those wars. This bit I can agree with.
I don't really know why this is on the military part of the forum. It seem to have more to do with politics.
The people of the southern states were fighting for their freedom from the United States. The lost but they were still fighting for their freedom. War is the biggest business there is. Central banks and their member bank shareholders loan millions and billions to nations who in turn make fortunes for the military establishment who consist of some of the largest corporations. This is what Eisenhower warned the nation about in his farewell address. At the end of WWII the newly created military industrial complex risked extinction without war, the Korean war kept the military industrial complex profitable. Viet Nam's value to the western world was its rubber tree resources owned by Michelin and was the reason France was allowed to recolonize Viet Nam after WWII despite their plea to the UN to allow them to become a sovereign democratic nation. Anyone who has studied WWII knows how important rubber is to the ability to make war. Afghanistan produces much of the worlds opium and heroin via the poppies which grow there. The Taliban were destroying the poppy fields much to the dismay of the world bankers who launder the 320 billion dollars a year in drug income. Today the US military stands guard over those poppy fields to ensure the illegal drug trade continues.
The Confederacy was not the United States. The US wasn't fighting for freedom. Yes, that is why France would have wanted to stay there. But we could make synthetic rubber. Why did we fight in Vietnam? There are other sources, and had we not fought there, we could still have bought from them. For that matter, France could have too. You're going to need a source for this, I'm afraid.
For sure, anyone who says otherwise is just nitpicking and agenda trolling. Just look at Putin's Russia and ISIL's caliphate, they are at different points but slowly turning the wheels of dictatorship and oppression for the benefit of ruling class. The west allows anyone to have a go, but its just the reality that wealth inequality will always exist and grow just because there will always be people with zero wealth... so the baseline will remain unchanged but as the west grows the top tier will go higher... the difference is the restriction for wealth mobility is an illusion of how wealth grows, while the restrictions in dictatorship's are exerted by force.
Not really. But chew on this: the Confederates weren't fighting for individual freedoms either. they were fighting for the rights of their individual states. Not the same thing as freedom.
It does not belong in here. But some people can't tell the two apart, to them everything is politics so every thread is fair game.
ALL wars have been fought for money (power).....IF we could follow them all to their start and know who did what we would see that. However, we the peons do not have access to the truth and never will.
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