We do not fight wars to protect lives; we fight wars to protect liberty.

[originalpckelly]

In a tyrannical form of government, the people are subject to suffer from the arbitrary use of authority by the tyrant. People live at the tyrant’s pleasure. His slightest whim can be the end for anyone in such a nation.

Tyrants keep control of their people through deception. People must be blinded and deceived of liberty and their own individual sovereignty. One may be deceived into giving a tyrant power by being tricked into thinking the tyrant will protect ones life. One may also be whipped up into a frenzied hatred of a particular part of the nations population or to some external threat. One way or another the tyrant creeps in to the minds of his people, and takes hold.

America is supposed to be a wholly and totally different type of nation. In our country tyranny is recognized as the big lie that it is. Our nation is one of liberty and one of popular sovereignty. In our nation people are protected from the arbitrary use of authority, and they choose their leaders.

America has been deceived of this truth, and by no one else but itself. We are now divided in two: one group believes everything is fine and the other thinks a single person or small group of people is responsible for this. Both are wrong. It is a collective lack of education about our US Constitution, the fact that more people can names Simpsons characters than liberties that the government cannot abridge, and a general poverty of good journalism among other problems. The overarching problem, however, is a profoundly different mindset than our forbearers had.

We now believe that wars are fought to protect live and not to protect liberty. This change didn't happen over night, but it has changed faster and this conception has finally solidified in the American consciousness.

We do not fight wars to protect lives; we fight wars to protect liberty. It is absolutely absurd to say we save life by sending people off to die. But there has been an even greater absurdity; we compromise liberty in order to save lives. The only thing we will get if we compromise liberty is tyranny and the profoundly uncertain and unsettling existence it brings. Imagine if someone had said, "Give me liberty or well I guess tyranny will do."

Life is worthless and therefore not worth living if one is not at liberty to choose ones destiny. The most wonderful discovery of the past millennium was that men and women are all born as sovereigns. That we have the right to rule ourselves. That the only power government has is the power the sovereigns, the people, give it.

In the face of a new threat America has turned its back on this knowledge. Just one generation ago, our nation faced the threat of complete and total annihilation. We survived, but that was when this gradual shift began. Two generations ago, our people faced the most brutal dictators the world has ever served up. We survived that. More than two hundred years ago our people faced the worst possible chances for success: we fought for our independence against the most powerful nation in the entire world or its history. Our principles were discovered during that time, and that may be why they are so strong. The only thing they need to survive is people to believe in them.

There have been some who have blamed our President for our problems, yes he did exploit the situation, but he is only one man and flawed. One man can never be trusted with the power we have given the President. The true responsibility lies with ourselves.

[BlueEyedSon]

1. We fight wars to protect profits/power

[originalpckelly]

2. Well...

That is not the way it is supposed to be.

[BlueEyedSon]

4. LMFAO!

[Greyhound]

3. This is/has been true since we first became a nation. n/t

[anarch]

5. we fight wars to gain control over resources

so it has always been. In recent times, it has been oil. Once that's gone, I suppose humans will find something else to kill each other over.

[originalpckelly]

6. Well...

what about the Revolutionary War?

[anarch]

10. economic factors played a major role in the American Revolution

"No taxation without representation!" and so on. The resources in this case included the overall production capacity of the colonies, natural resources like sugar, etc. Granted there were many other factors, but why do you think the British Empire had such stake in any of its colonies? I mean, why have an empire at all, if not to add to the wealth of the rulers? It has always been about control of resources/wealth.

[originalpckelly]

11. I feel really bad for the people who died in the Revolutionary War...

because they died for a nation that so selfish and stupid it can't even wake up and see self-destruction headed its way.

[reichstag911]

13. Exactly.

Most people think the Revolution was an uprising of the common man against despotic George III. It was, in fact, the largely aristocratic class demanding liberty in the form of tax cuts. While Jefferson's soaring rhetoric gave the veneer of high-minded "Enlightenment" to the revolutionary enterprise, he was far from any action on the field, and notoriously rode out of Virginia ahead of the Brits.

That said, they did create the possibility of a Constitutional democracy which subsequent generations have seen fit to ignore as commercial interests and/or popular opinion dictated.

[anarch]

16. yes...some of the founding fathers were concerned with avoiding oligarchy,

while a fair contingent of the ruling aristocracy was intent on realizing and perpetuating it. It's an ongoing struggle. Looking at the current administration, it's pretty clear who has the upper hand at the moment.

[reichstag911]

17. To paraphrase *,...

..."oligarchy's a turrible thing, 'ceptin' when I get to be one of 'em!"

[tjwash]

19. Self Delete

delete,wrong place

[The2ndWheel]

7. Yeah, for liberty

That's the ticket.

More like resources. Be they people, land, water, energy, whatever.

The next war(and there will be plenty more) fought for liberty will be the first of its kind.

[mdmc]

8. why do we fight the drug war?

[reichstag911]

18. To keep the underclasses locked up...

...and away from the voting booths.

[tjwash]

23. I like your style reichstag911

You and I seem to have the same attitude about certain things...

[maxsolomon]

22. the drug war is about wealth & political power

acquiring and maintaining it by pandering to the fears of the bourgousie & the undeducated.

when it started, when marijuana was made illegal, miscagenation was the tool used to outlaw hemp & make the hearst newspaper empire's southern pine land holdings skyrocket in value as a source of paper.

now, it benefits the prison industrial complex. what would we do if all those prisons were empty? who would employ those good prison guard folks in Susanville, CA? we've got to keep the jails filled for the economy!

[reichstag911]

28. Give that man a ci-gar!

Did you read Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do... by Peter McWilliams? That's where I first read about Herast's campaign to demonize hemp/marijuana, and the economic self-interest behind it.

[maxsolomon]

33. no, i read The Emporer's New Clothes or something

i can't remember, i had a 3 foot high bong at the time...

[originalpckelly]

9. Wars that are not fought for liberty are unjust wars(n/t)

[0007]

20. I'll second that!

[anarch]

24. a noble sentiment

That would make every war ever an unjust war, too. The struggle for liberty is never fought between states, only against them.

Personally, out of pragmatism, I'd have to go along with just war theory in saying that going to war is justified only when your nation's territorial integrity or political sovereignty has been violated. Like when Poland was invaded in 1939, for example. Poland had every right and justification to go to war with Germany in that case.

[sonsera]

12. How wars are started

"The loud little handful will shout for war. The pulpit will warily and cautiously protest at first.... The great mass of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes, and will try to make out why there should be a war, and they will say earnestly and indignantly: "It is unjust and dishonorable and there is no need for war."

Then the few will shout even louder.... Before long you will see a curious thing: anti-war speakers will be stoned from the platform, and free speech will be strangled by hordes of furious men who still agree with the speakers but dare not admit it...

Next, the statesmen will invent cheap lies...and each man will be glad of these lies and will study them because they soothe his conscience; and thus he will bye and bye convince himself that the war is just and he will thank God for a better sleep he enjoys by his self-deception."

-- Mark Twain

[originalpckelly]

14. I have never been so disappointed in my entire life. (n/t)

[RaleighNCDUer]

26. It is easy for people to be cynical. I've fallen prey to that myself

on many occasions. Unfortunately, there is enough truth in the cynical comments that it seems to undercut the point you are making.

I think that WW2 was, for the most part, a true fight for liberty. I think that for most the people who fought it, the Revolutionary War was a fight for liberty -- proof of that would be in the system of government we eventually devised to secure it.

Perhaps, had you phrased it 'Wars SHOULD be fought to protect liberty, not lives' you would have gotten a more positive response. Wars fought for resources inevitably consume far more resources than they preserve, and wars to enforce ideology inevitably undermine the ideology they are meant to support, but a war of self-defense fought in defense of liberty is, by any definition, a just war.

[tjwash]

15. I understand the point you are making, however...

...in our entire history, we have never fought wars to "protect liberty." We have fought wars to expand our American empire. We indeed, are an empire, make no mistake about it. Always have been, always will be.

It started with American Revolution in 1776, where a group of rich white slave owners didn't want to pay any taxes to England,and had very few qualms about sending other people children to fight in it. Yes, things have really changed haven't they? Fast forward to the War of 1812, refereed to by many,as "the Second War of Independence" where, in actuality, we got our asses kicked by Britain while trying to take over Canada. The Mexican-American war? More manifest destiny and expansionism as we swiped Mexican territory, and "liberated" states such as Texas, and started the westward expansion slaughtering the native tribes, and producing a genocide as abhorrent as any other "barbaric country" we tend to look down on today.

Spanish-American War? We removed the "dangerous Spanish rule" in the PI, and instead of granting the Filipinos independence, we attempted to annex them for ourselves instead, and for the next four years fought a war with the Filipinos. Hell, they probably told the troops going in, that they were going to be greeted as liberators, and called the Filipino freedom fighters "insurgents".

The Civil War; instead of a long boring thesis in it, let's just say that it was a war to determine what form of cheap labor system, the United States was to run. Would it be the robber-barons of the north,who were determined to have a system of child labor, debtors prisons, and a system of usury and wage slavery setup to keep people forever in debt and beholden to them? Or would it be the plantation owners of the south who favored slavery?

My point is, that you can pretty much go through every war that we have been in, and see the empire building at work. It's our way. It's how we were brought up as a country, and how we have always done things. The question, is, how do we stop THAT behavior in us as a country, when it's all we know?

[ProfessorGAC]

21. Good Essay

Nicely done! I would have to concur completely.
The Professor

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

25. Gandhi said it better about war.

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy.” - Gandhi

[bigtree]

27. nicely written

K'd&R'd

[originalpckelly]

29. This nation can be more than a cynic's vision...

just because everything we have done in the past wasn't without selfish interests doesn't mean those actions had no value at all.

No the people during the Civil War probably couldn't have given a crap about slavery, but as we look back that war was a turning point. World War I was a complete dupe, but it placed into the consciousness of the world, just how horrible war is and that we can come up with an international organization to prevent war. No the League of Nations didn't work out, but it did eventually lead to the UN. The people who fought during the Revolutionary War did fight it over taxes, but just like the Civil War, when we look back it had some good effect upon the world. Our Revolutionary War told the world that people can live in liberal democracy if we so choose, even if there is some overbearing power standing between liberty and us.

I would bet that most actions in history had nasty little truths to them, but we should let those truths diminish the beauty of what was accomplished. To simply look at our human struggle though the eyes of a cynic is to deny the beauty of humanity, our flaws and our efforts to overcome them.

[titoresque]

30. tell that to these people......

"I would bet that most actions in history had nasty little truths to them, but we should(nt?) let those truths diminish the beauty of what was accomplished. To simply look at our human struggle though the eyes of a cynic is to deny the beauty of humanity, our flaws and our efforts to overcome them."

The beauty of humanity.....

http://nobravery.cf.huffingtonpost.com/

[tjwash]

31. Uh, yeah. Sure.

I think maybe you should go to any Native American Reservation and ask them if they are happy that we destroyed their entire culture, and pushed their respective nations to the brink of extinction, but "don't let those truths diminish the beauty of what was accomplished."

War, and Empire building is only one thing. Bad.

Justifying it by saying it was done for the greater good, is obscene. It is every bit as abhorrent as GWB claiming that we are "liberating people" and "spreading democracy" across the Middle East.

[originalpckelly]

32. Is there anything worth fighting for?

GWB is just using liberty and democracy as rhetoric to support his insane BS. There are, however, people still left in this world who are willing to uphold democracy.

[tjwash]

34. Yes. If I'm at a peace rally, and someone attacks me...

...like has happened in the recent past, I am willing to throw down. I'm also willing to go to jail for expressing my right to free speech, which has also happened in the recent past. I'm also willing to fight to keep jobs here in America, and to keep these modern day robber barons from bleeding our country dry, as they scoop up every last bit of wealth that they can get their hands on, while retreating behind the gates of their private, arm-guarded neighborhoods.

What I am not willing to fight for, is for the above said robber barons, who have their bought and paid for lawmakers running the show. I'm not willing to fight to forcibly take a sovereign nations resources, while we let their innocents die of disease and malnutrition, and our soldiers die violent deaths, and come home physically and emotionally scarred for life. I'm not willing to fight so that the above mentioned people can put a Walmart in every foreign village, and Mcdonalds on the corner of every third world country's streets, and shove the idea that their culture is bad, and that they must adhere to ours from now on.

To people that think it is all good that we are doing the above, to those I say--go ahead. Keep thinking that everything we are doing is noble and good, and that fighting for some obscure ideal that they feed you on {insert mainstream media source here}, is fraught with benefits. I had that illusion once in my life, when I was a twenty-something, and found myself drafted, and in Vietnam in the late sixties wondering how the hell I got there, and what the hell I was doing. It was an attitude adjustment for me.