From Adam Bitely:
I was just sitting here talking to my roommate on the matter of the military defending our rights over seas. If the military was defending our rights, wouldn’t they be here protecting us from the Obama administration, congress, the Supreme Court and many other sources of control?
That, however, is not the case. Our government has deployed soldiers overseas to protect it’s role in the world. This has nothing to do with defending the rights of Americans.
I, for one, am quite sick of hearing the argument that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are to protect my rights. Well, who the hell is protecting me from a congress that spends money that doesn’t exist yet and a President that is trying to take control of every industry that he can get his hands on? That argument that Republicans once threw around (and still do) as often as a Sham Wow commercial airs won’t do.
Ok, it’s late, and I needed to vent on this subject. Good night.
It’s a good argument and in the case of these two wars I agree it as always confused me that we fight in countries that MAY harbor enemies of the state. I can’t wholly agree with you about fighting overseas, If a government attacks us, then the U.S can take action, however if it is an underground organization within the geographical boundaries of a country then that is the issue of said country.
As far as the military, I will not accept any argument that they are protecting my rights. The individual soldier may fully believe that they are and I won’t question their motive. However, as a whole the military is designed to protect an serve the nation. The nation is neither you nor me it is an idea they are programmed to enforce the idea of a United States.
I agree, if we are attacked by a government, then our government may respond.
One should take into consideration the fact that soldiers surrender their rights when they enlist, and are not phased about it. They see it as a duty. There is no reason to believe that the average soldier generally cares about rights and whatnot (even if they say that they are fighting for liberty and for the United States). Or, at least, that they have a clear understanding of what rights are, and a clear understanding of what the government they’re fighting for has done to strip its own people from the rights they say they are protecting.
I went to basic training, and I never once heard anything about rights. I left before I had a chance to deploy… thanks to whoever I have to thank.
I don’t think you can apply classical liberal rights theory to global politics and conflicts. The way rights theory works is that people in a society understand that for mutual protection against physical force and to protect their independence and security, they willingly give up the freedom to engage in violence. In a society, if you hit me with a club, I can appeal to the police to arrest you or recover damages from you in court because, as a society, we basically agree that force should be prohibited in certain cases…
But, the world is not a society, there is no global police to appeal to for protection of rights, no court, and no common societal understanding of when force is and isn’t permissable. In the end, foreign policy is just a schoolyard scrap where you can’t call the teacher or the cops. Pretending that the other boys will respect the fact that you want to be left alone in exchange for leaving them alone after you let them get their hands on butterfly knives, golfballs, and slingshots is just refusing to face reality and accept the dynamics of tribalism. That’s particularly true, by the way, if you have a pretty girlfriend and a nice leather jacket that the other boys want.
During the last 75 years, the United States has interfered greatly with the affairs of other states in order to stop the world from becomming a mass of insanity from which it cannot protect the rights of its citizens at home and abroad. Often it makes most sense to establish a policy of neutrality and a kind of you leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone posture. However, there are other times, when if you don’t want the world to become a communist or anti-American alliance of thugs and crazies, you have to take steps to prevent it from becoming one. We’ll never know, but I believe that if the United States hadn’t take preventative action during the last few decades, much of Asia and South America would be militantly anti-American and Europe would be a much colder place. I also think that I would’ve seen a nuclear attack on U.S. soil and would still be practicing fallout drills.
So then Brandon, you are disagreeing with Adam, correct? Adam is going in the direction of a limited military, responding only when directly attacked. This idea is in keeping with limited government. What we have now is a huge military, with constant intervention overseas, which is part of big government. Is that what you are advocating, or do I misunderstand?