US soldier in Nuristan
Province of Afghanistan

A nation is nothing without it’s military, without it’s brave soldiers, and the great people who assist, support and admire them. I hope humanity reaches a point someday where war is obsolete – where conflict is always resolved in ways that do not slaughter freedom, but without going to war also. In the meantime, the military and it’s soldiers are a nation’s most valuable resources. No amount of prosperity will do you good if you cannot defend it and your freedoms.

No matter how we may feel about going into a given war or conflict, we must support the troops and mission regardless. A soldier goes to war regardless of his opinion. He follows orders, as he should and must, regardless of his opinion. We must debate the reasons for going to war and try to prevent war (when the alternative is not worse), but we need to support the troops regardless of our opinion.

I was happy to see, when some students were protesting the Gulf War at my university, that the protesters were not hating the soldiers themselves. It was actually kind of silly because there were too clashing crowds, another crowd saying “support the troops”. I saw no reason these two groups had to conflict, which is far better than the Vietnam era protest picture. One can be both opposed to a given war and also fully support the troops.

Young people now might be shocked and embarrassed at how U.S. soldiers were treated by protesters upon returning from Vietnam. They were spat on, sometimes pummeled with rocks or bricks and more. It’s no wonder many at the time thought it was the end of the U.S., because a nation who disrespects it’s own soldiers doesn’t last for long. Even the Kent State shooting is normally presented in a very biased manner. Most of those protesting were not innocent, meek little students, but an angry, violent mob of students and guest instigators, pushing, provoking the National Guard unit until some snapped. I personally know of a National Guard soldier who had to stand guard for 48 hours or more in another university town at the time. Several of his teeth were knocked out by a protester throwing a brick at him. To me, it’s a testament to our soldiers’ discipline that incidents like Kent State didn’t happen more. The soldiers had much more discipline and character than the protesters did.

I get annoyed at both liberals and neo-cons in their attitude about the soldier. The liberal insults the soldier by pretending war is never necessary and portraying troops as just evil, violence-loving brutes. The neo-con insults the soldier by pretending every soldier is gung-ho wanting to happily, heroically die for their questionable neo-con agendas. Maybe this is extreme, but shouldn’t every congressman who votes for war enlist one of their own children for a tour of duty? Shouldn’t The President spend a couple days in the trenches with the common troops on the front lines?

Four US WWII Soldiers watching allied bombardement

The reality is that most soldiers are from poor or disadvantaged backgrounds, as they have been, through most of history. Very few actually want to die. They want to serve their country, sometimes get benefits like college money or the experience of military itself, but very, very few are in it to die. What I’m saying is, when playing with soldiers’ precious lives, you’d better take foreign policy and decisions to go to war extremely seriously.

Of course on the topic of defending freedom, readers of this blog are insightful enough to realize our greatest threat to freedom currently is internal – that is, bad, liberal and big-government ideas that are killing freedoms from the inside, from our own voting citizens, movements and politicians.