Then how about Ireland as an example? No significant military, no alliance with a major power, a checkered history with its closest neighbour, longstanding internal strife, but still a free and democratic nation. So it is possible.
For the most part, our military has not had to defend our freedom from any immediate threat, in the sense of defending against some external power seeking to invade American soil, censor our newspapers, close our universities, shut down our houses of worship, or pillage our cities and sell the survivors into slavery. This is in stark contrast to the militaries of many countries throughout history, which have faced threats by tyrannical or even genocidal invaders.
It could be argued that our military has managed to successfully deter invasion without (fortunately) having to actually fight off invading armies on the beaches or in the streets and hills of America, but there is definitely an element of ahistorical exaggeration in statements like the one quoted in the O.P. For much of our history, unless we were actually fighting a war, we didn’t bother with much more than a token military force; well into the 20th Century, the U.S. ranked somewhere down with Portugal as a military power. We avoided subjugation not because of our mighty military, but by simple geography. As Abraham Lincoln said in 1838:
Perhaps Old Abe exaggerated a bit, but consider how much trouble people from Napoleon to Hitler had simply getting an invasion force across the English Channel, let alone the Atlantic Ocean.
However, “It is the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the fact that Canada isn’t and never has been very densely populated, and Mexico has never really got its act together enough to pose a threat to us, and not the reporter that has given us the freedom of the press, etc., etc.”–well, it kinda lacks poetry.
Of course we have fought wars, which geography generally gave us the luxury of mobilizing for before the enemy was actually at the gates. Looking individually at the wars fought by the U.S. armed forces and their predecessors:
The American Revolution. I suppose it’s axiomatic that in some sense the Continental Army secured our liberty in this one. Even if we eventually achieved freedom sans independence (or achieved independence by other means), you could say it would be someone else’s liberty, not “American liberty”–Greater Canadian liberty, or British North American liberty. Others have argued in this thread how bad it would really have been to have remained under the British Crown. Perhaps without the example and memory of losing an empire in the Thirteen Colonies, British policy in Canada and Australia might have turned out to be more repressive.
The Barbary Wars. The Barbary corsairs were a nasty lot, and eventually the U.S. Navy and Marines (“the shores of Tripoli”) acted to secure the freedom of individual Americans; but the Barbary pirates were never a threat to sail over here and directly attack Americans on our own soil or pose a challenge to American liberty in general.
The War of 1812. Probably the closest the armed forces of the United States have ever come to having to actually defend the country against a foreign invasion, in the same sense that countries like Belgium or Poland or Korea have had to fight off foreign invaders. After all, the British did burn down buildings in Washington, D.C.
The Mexican War. Here of course we were the ones doing the invading (“the Halls of Montezuma”). The hapless Mexicans never posed any threat to occupy our capital or annex vast tracts of our country.
The Civil War. Arguably the army and navy of the Union did fight to secure American freedom, but as Lincoln noted, we came close to dying by suicide here, not from any foreign invasion.
Indian Wars. It seems hard to argue with a straight face that the Indians posed a threat to our freedom. I suppose you could say that if we didn’t kill them or run them off and take their land, we wouldn’t have any place to be free in; but that’s obviously not the sort of thing most people have in mind when they think of soldiers “defending our liberty”.
The Spanish-American War and the Phillippine Insurrection. Neither side posed a threat to the other’s freedom here–Spain wasn’t going to sack Washington, D.C., and we weren’t going to sack Madrid. Some might say our forces secured other people’s freedom in Cuba, but then we turned around and shamefully denied the freedom of Filippinos.
World War I. Certainly “freedom of navigation” is important, but few would argue that the Kaiser was planning to come over and subjugate us; it seems hard to argue that either the Allies or the Central Powers were more or less of a threat to Liberty in the abstract.
World War II. At last we’re getting to a war which many consider to be a case of genuine “defending our liberty”. It’s worth noting, though, that Hitler and the Japanese never had any real plans to invade America–we were way over their horizon. They eventually attacked us only because we were opposing, by means only barely short of open, all-out warfare, their attacks on the liberty of others. Even after we entered the war, the Axis still had no way to reach us, and no really plausible plans of overcoming that difficulty.
The Cold War (including Korea and Vietnam). Again, this can be argued to be a true example of our armed forces defending our liberty. Also, long-range bombers (and later ICBMs) armed with nuclear weapons meant the vast geographic spaces Lincoln was so confident of were largely nullified. Again, though, this can be exaggerated. The USSR (cheesy '80’s movies to the contrary) never had any real prospect of invading or subjugating us; to the contrary, we had bases and alliances that effectively surrounded and contained the USSR, and for much of the Cold War the balance of nuclear forces was in our favor. I think our armed forces did genuinely defend freedom in Korea (although it took a long while after the war for South Korea to truly become free), but Kim Il-Sung was never going to invade California. Again, the U.S. armed forces fought for other people’s freedom, not that of Americans directly.
In the great 20th century conflicts, World War II and the Cold War, we had the luxury of fighting tyrants long before they posed any direct threat to us. At our best, we defended the liberty of others, so that our children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren didn’t have to face the hypothetical possibility of having to defend their own freedom in their own country. (At our worst, we did a lot of bad, underhanded, and dishonorable things, and acted not only to defend against tyranny or secure liberty, but also to secure or own material and political interests.)
I don’t believe we should have been isolationists in World War II, or in the Cold War (although I certainly don’t agree with every action that we took to fight against Communism in the Cold War, or for that matter necessarily with every action we took to fight against the Axis). But even if the U.S. had remained isolationist against the Axis, or later against the USSR and its allies, they had no immediate plans against us. I think the world would have been a much worse place, and hypothetically in a world dominated by the Axis powers or by an unchecked Communist empire, there might eventually have arisen a direct threat to American freedom. But this is not the same thing as facing an immediate threat on one’s borders, as many other nations have faced.
We have had the great luxury of being a large, mostly isolated, prosperous (and eventually staggeringly rich) country, and it’s only comparatively recently that we’ve bothered to give a damn about the rest of the world, militarily speaking–at which point, we’ve had the luxury of being able to fight our wars on someone else’s continent; years, decades, or even generations before they could pose a direct threat to us.
Hey, it’s better to have a military and not need it…
First of all, let me subscribe to Martin Hyde’s post (which, in spirit, is reiterated by Airman Doors and others). The military secures the nation. Whether one of those things secured for the nation is individual liberty, that is something that comes out of the social-cultural-historic whole of how that nation evolved into being.
The original quote is a political statement that IMO doesn’t look so much as being tribute to the military, but rather like it *is a put-down of “the reporter, the poet, the campus organizer”, * from someone who feels they’re not grateful enough.
Seeing as Ireland was under a nasty occupation from its eastern neighbor for a long time, I think it’s a lesson in the benefits of a strong military. Also, NATO member or not, if Ireland was invaded by someone I’m pretty sure the rest of Europe and the U.S. would rally to its defense.
Look, the quote is a little bombastic and silly, but there’s no doubt that it’s better to be a country that can defend itself than one that can’t. Our freedoms arise from our democratic ideals, but it’s a good thing to defend ourselves and our friends from those who don’t share those ideals.
It would be most instructive to know the context of the chaplain’s remarks (I thought all chaplains were officers; first NCO chaplain I’ve heard of.)
This is a common type of pep talk for a military or veteran audience. Ideally, we all want to believe that we loaded the deck gun, climbed into the airplane or carried the rifle to protect our homeland and whatever it stands for. In the United States, we are taught that our nation “stands for” freedom. And military personnel are told this constantly, probably because it’s easier to get people to put their own lives in peril for “freedom” than for “free enterprise,” which is what America really stands for.
**Martin Hyde ** and **Airman Doors ** said it well – the military protects us from external threats to our freedom (but, alas, can do nothing against internal threats.) But I strongly suspect the quote is from a speech or essay, and the writer is making a connection between the freedoms we enjoy and service of those in uniform. It’s actually a two-step connection that has been simplified for the purpose of rhetoric. That’s not a bad thing; it still reminds anyone who hears or reads it that, among other things, a strong military is necessary for us to enjoy the freedom we enjoy. That’s the difference between rhetoric and “total B.S.”
Definitely apples and oranges. Our military is a fine military, but our freedom is defended by our collective desire to be free. The military is there for defense and invasion; a deterrent. We have a degree of security provided by our military, for which I am thankful, but it has little or nothing to do with our country being free. In fact, spreading the meme that strong military=free country is borderline fascism.
No, I don’t think that’s fair to say. How can it be? We know that the military can be used as a tool of opression (e.g., China) and we know that militaries can stand by while people’s freedoms are taken away by the civilian leadership (e.g., Germany under the Nazis). The reason I have the “luxury” of exercising my rights is because all of us demand that I should be able to exercise our rights.
I don’t see the military as some unique institution in this regard. Certainly the court system plays an instrumental role in allowing me to exercise my rights. Certainly the police do. Our boatload of nuclear weapons do. The press does. While the military certainly plays a role in this regard, there are so many other institutions that are critical to maintaining my rights.
But the military isn’t the only tool we use to deter invasion. We use the CIA and State Department as well. We use the threat of sanctions. We use our purchasing power. We use our nuclear arsenal (which I realizes is under military auspices, but our first nuclear weapon was invented by civillian scientists). All of these institutions can easily be used to deprive us of our rights, but because all of us make up these institutions, we try to prevent that.
Yup, as someone said “If you want peace prepare for war”
No.
As was pointed out, while the military does serve as a deterrent against foreign agression and subsequent invasion and occupation, it can be argued that ones own government can be a far greater potential threat to freedom. What happens when the government decides that the press or free speech or a demonstration is illegal or a threat to national security? Ultimately the military is an extension of that government.
So clearly there is something other than the existance of the military that protects and preserves our freedom.
The United States was attacked directly one more than one occasion before formally decvlaring war, and given the hideous nature of Nazism, it’s fairly likely that Nazi victory in Europe would have meant long term bad news for the freedom of the rest of the world.
I’ll grant that attacks on the U.S. mainland were a long term plan for the Nazis, but make mo mistake about it; a world where Europe was Nazified would be a very uncomfortable one to live in, and would not be peaceful for long. The very essence of Nazi ideology was war. War was not a means to Nazis; it was a natural state of man, to be celebrated and pursued. The war would have spread to North America eventually.
You are aware that Hitler didn’t really want to invade Britain and would have let them keep their empire, aren’t you?
Invading Russia gave the Nazis plenty to chew on. It’s ridiculous to suggest they would have simply wandered into North America. If the US had maintained our isolationism and acquiesced to Hitler’s conquest of Europe, he would have had no reason to gear up the massive undertaking that invading and occupying this continent would have entailed.
The same goes for every other potential freedom-taker-awayer: How to pull off a full scale invasion and occupation of North America?
The short answer to the OP is, ‘Every day.’ We are able to enjoy our liberty because as George Orwell said, ‘Rough men stand ready’ to defend it.
No, not in the long run, he would not have. At the time it was convenient if it meant he could concentrate on Russia. Had that been successful, eventually there would have been war with Britain again.
I don’t think you quite grasp the concept of Nazism. The central point, such as it was, of Nazism is that all races are perpetually at war with one another, and that war is the natural state of a superior race, since through war, the race preserves itself. Abstract or idealistic definitions of “right” and “wrong” behaviour are therefore irrelevant and nonsensical; the only behaviour that is correct is to engage in anything necessary to further the superiority of the race. The German race, as such, was required to be constantly at war to protect its existence. The primary enemy in 1941 was the USSR, but with them beaten, Nazism would have called for more war against more enemies, trumping up whatever reason was convenient; that’s simply what the ideology stood for.
I agree with Little Nemo that it is not a military which guaranties freedom, or North Korea would be one of the freest countries in the world.
I like this thread because I finally get to relay a story which my economics professor told us. He had previously taught at a university in one of the Dakotas, and there was an air force officer, an F14 pilot, IIRC, stationed there as a defense against Soviet bombers. (That dates me, I guess.)
The professor was discussing people’s income as a function of their economic contribution to society and said he asked the officer what his contribution to society was. The officer said that his job was keeping Russian bombers away, so the professor followed up and asked how many bombers he had kept away that day. The officer replied, “All of them.”
I like that story, but the question in the OP is different.
The key point here, though, is that our military keeps us free, but in the sense that it keeps us free from other countries, not free from the ills of a repressive government. While the National Guard has been used to protect freedom, it has also been used to oppress it, such as at Kent State.
With the exception of coups, militaries serve at the please of the standing government which tend to not grant new liberties. We need all of the other professions dissed in the quote.
The question has been raised about the author of the quote. Looking on the net, it seems Father Dennis Edward O’Brien was in the marines and many sources say that he was in Guadalcanal, but there’s two problems. First, as noted above, chaplains are officers. Second, marines don’t have chaplains. They come from the Navy. It’s said that O’Brien became an priest after he left the military. It’s part of the glurge factor to make it seem that a chaplain wrote this.
By glorifying the military, it’s makes it easier to use them for purposes other than protecting our liberties. It’s more of the same tricks from the right wing.
Not sure I agree. The Japanese attacked us on our own soil (and it was our “own soil” only because we had gobbled up the sovereign nation of Hawaii half a century before), but their aim was really to keep us from interfering in the Pacific. Our own way of life was not much threatened, unless we consider occupying the Philippines to be part of our way of life.
And the Nazis would have had to take out Stalin before they turned to us. I think Stalin would have ultimately won that encounter, even without the limited help he got from us.
Right. And if Stalin had beaten Hitler all on his own, all of Western and Eastern Europe (with the possible exceptions of Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Ireland and England) would have gone communist. And these nations would have been targeted next - Spain had a communist movement that had been suppressed under Franco, and England had a leftist streak that could have been exploited. And this assumes no war - which Stalin at that point wouldn’t have been averse to trying. Who would stop him?
Other countries in the world would have to come to some kind of accomodation to this, and we would have been no exception. And assuming our domestic tranquility would have been unaffected seems naive.
Hitler and Stalin would have more or less exhausted themselves fighting each other. The attrition on the Eastern Front was unbelievable. Had Hitler been able to press more there, he simply would have lost lots more troops, and Stalin too. Mutiny might well have brought the whole Soviet system to collapse, just as the Czar’s government had collapsed a generation earlier.
But to answer the OP, I think the answer is closer to “never” than we generally suppose. We have no enemies who represent a serious threat of invasion, and haven’t for much of our history. Besides, you have to look at all sides of the equation, including the actual threats to our freedom posed by our military. If we think of wars as being a threat to freedom – as they often are – then we have to worry about the extent to which militaries are generators of wars. I think they indubitably are – look at the example of World War I, not to mention Iraq.
Here’s a thought experiment: suppose the U.S. suddenly downscaled its military in the most radical way. What would happen? Would we really be invaded? Would our commercial interests suddenly be jeopardized? Would our freedoms be at risk? I really can’t see it, personally. And somebody would need to give me a pretty convincing scenario, naming actual enemies and actual motives, before I’d be persuaded.
I think that is a false comparison, really.
The military in other countries is oppressive to freedom - it isn’t under our system. Similarly benign things like the police, the press, the movies, and psychiatry become tools of oppression under system of government that aren’t so nice as ours.
I will readily admit that the rhetoric in the OP is overblown, but it isn’t false on the face of it.