Just How Useful Is Our Military?

Sitting here doing my morning reading, I come across this article which questions the value or necessity of our military.

If we strip away all the yellow ribbons and stars and stripes, and look honestly at our military activity since the turn of the 20th century, it's next to impossible to find any time when our homeland was truly in danger of being overrun, or our freedoms trampled by a foreign tyrant. Why then are most Americans, even many of our comrades on the left, of the opinion that our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have been giving their lives for our freedom? In a real stretch, you might be able to say that they've died for others' freedom or liberation, but that is entirely different.

In one regards, the author is right. During the 20th century, there really weren't very many direct threats to the US. Pearl Harbor, a few Nazi commandos and some balloon bombs - that was about it. But that misses the point.

No one really came close to making real threats against us, because we had a large and powerful military. If we had been weak, the Japanese wouldn't have hit us with a sucker punch at Pearl, they would have invaded San Francisco or Los Angeles.

If we had been weak, the Nazi's would have invaded Washington, Philadelphia or New York.

Or the Soviets would have overrun us completely.

Were most of the battles fought in far off lands? Yep. Our military strength gave us the capacity to take the fight to the enemy. We put him on the defensive.

So to answer the author's premise, our fighting in foreign lands and our liberating foreign people did defend liberty at home. We took the offensive and made the enemy fight on our terms. Our military defended the homeland by defeating the enemy before he could get here.

It seems as though the author would have us wait to fight a war on our shores, as that would be respectful in his view. He even goes as far as to invoke the Founders as desiring a small standing army.

We actually have a relatively small standing military force. Nations the size of one of our mid-size states have large militaries than we do. Our military is fearsome not for its size, but for its dedication and efficiency that come from defending the highest of ideals.

The Founders were concerned that a large military could be turned against the nation. But what some people have failed to recognize is that our nation is now our military. The armed forces are but one component of our strength.

Each and every day as we go to work, or to school, or to just engage in our everyday lives we are fighting a global war. Our weapons are our ideas, our inventions, and our freedom. Our economy is the greatest engine of war that has ever been devised in the whole history of humanity.

Our economy played a critical role in the fall of the Soviet Union. Without its strength, we could not have engaged in the arms race that crushed the Soviet menace. It has subjugated friend and foe alike by bringing them closer to our ideals of free enterprise and free people. How far into socialism and communism would Europe have gone without the threat of losing touch with the American economy? Our free market capitalism kept them from becoming another part of the Soviet experiment as much, if not more than the American military.

It is distasteful to see someone downplaying the significance of the contribution of our military. Throughout the American Century, we never had to rebuild from the ravages of war. Our ability to take the fight to the enemy was another form of defending the homeland and was every bit as important as it allowed us to build our most powerful weapon - the US economy - without significant setback.

Our use of the armed forces has been brilliant, wise and just. I have every confidence that the Founders would be proud.

The American Century proved us worthy of their dream.