Can We Please Nip This One In The Bud?

by Eddie Tews

01 April 2003

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We've all heard the refrain a billion-and-one times: "They're fighting for our freedoms." (Or its variants: "Those young men died so that you could say that," and, "If you were living in ______, you wouldn't be able to say that.")

The implication, in the first case, is that here endeth all discussion. Marketplace bombed in Baghdad? "They're fighting for our freedoms." Hundreds of thousands incinerated in Hiroshima? "They're fighting for our freedoms." Entire villages massacred in Vietnam? "They're fighting for our freedoms." Birth deformities in Afghanistan? "They're fighting for our freedoms." Dikes destroyed in Korea? "They're fighting for our freedoms." Half of Sudan's pharmaceutical production taken out in one blow? "They're fighting for our freedoms." No crime is too great, it would appear, to ensure American freedoms.

The implication, in the second case, is even more beguiling. We won't suffer a gruesome fate for speaking out against injustice, ergo we should not speak out against injustice.

So much for the logic of our show-stopping interjection. How about the substance of the claim? When, in other words, have troops fighting an overseas war been protecting our freedoms? That is to say, in which wars would the target country, were it not for our expeditionary forces, have mounted an invasion of the United States and zapped our beloved freedoms from us?

World War I? A European civil war, whose combatants slaughtered each other by the hundreds of thousand, the battle lines remaining stalemated throughout. The United States entered the war – over great public opposition – near to its finish, in essence to make sure that British and French debts to it wouldn't be wiped out by a German victory.

Vietnam? A starving peasant country halfway around the world, wracked by French colonialism, with no navy, and whose proposed post-colonial constitution was modeled on the Declaration of Independence.

The Gulf War? After eight years of debilitating conflict with Iran (heavily aided by the United States), the border between the two remained unchanged. After the annexation of puny Kuwait, it was swiftly ejected, and subject to a decade of devastating and humiliating sanctions, then invaded again.

Korea? Another bloody stalemate on another tiny colonial outpost – Korea had been occupied by first Japan, then the United States and Russia. Would not one think that before even considering an invasion across the World's largest ocean, it would have to first liberate itself? Korea lost a greater percentage of its population in the war than did Russia in the Second World War.

Afghanistan? The poorest country in the world, whose government was a world pariah which didn't even have control over its entire territory, and whose military budget does not exist.

The War in the Pacific? The Japanese attacked a few military bases located on colonies in the middle of the ocean. Not only was that as close as they came to snatching our freedoms from us, but they undertook the war in the knowledge that their industrial base was woefully insufficient for taking on the world's greatest industrial powerhouse. An act of desperation that, it was known from the outset was doomed to failure.

Finally, we come to the Nazis. The Nazis, who were unable to cross the English Channel would have been able to cross the Atlantic Ocean? The Nazis, who so frightened the bejeesuz out of the Americans that the American military landing in Europe was put off as long as possible to allow the Germans and Russians to kill as many of each other as possible. (Indeed, this proved to be the Nazis' downfall in the end: 80% of German casualties were suffered on the Eastern Front.)

Meanwhile, those freedoms we hold dear are under attack – from within. Who shall honour those fighting valiantly to protect our hard-won civil liberties? How much money shall be allocated to defend the singularly immutable Bill of Rights? Who shall oversee the FBI and the police? Who shall hold the Supreme Court accountable? Who shall, my friends, put a brick in John Ashcroft's ass, and who shall support him or her doing so?

The young people abroad are too busy (and probably will be for some time), so it must be up to us. In the meantime, can we pretty please nip the "fighting for our freedoms" crap in the bud?