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Yeah that's a great quote by Jessup, ironically used as a defense in tyrannizing and ultimately killing a weaker person. Personally I prefer Weinberg's assessment of the situation: beating up on a weakling.

Is it neccessary for anyone to stand on a wall with a gun in Cuba? How is this keeping me safe? Are they Florida's last bastion of defense from the Cuban hordes chomping at the bit for Amercan conquest? Yeah, right. You're really performing a critical service there, Jessup. Perhaps the Cubans want to kill you because you invaded and are occupying what rightly belongs to them.

The military doesn't simply defend. They do lots of other things nowadays, mainly offensive conquest. That it is still labelled as "defense" doesn't make it so. However, I have no problem with the actual men&women in service. They are conditioned to think that it isn't their job to decide what is just and what is not, what is defense and what is aggression. They are simply doing their jobs (although that isn't enough to exonerate the Nazis or the KGB, now is it? Maybe military personell SHOULD start thinking for themselves.)

Yeah that's a great quote by Jessup, ironically used as a defense in tyrannizing and ultimately killing a weaker person. Personally I prefer Weinberg's assessment of the situation: beating up on a weakling.

You cover a lot of ground. First, the quote, in or out of context makes a point, and I agree: The military is a necessary evil.
Policy is made by the politicians. The questions of who we are defending ourselves against, and whether we are conquering or defending, all political.
I personally believe that we need a strong military, and yes, you do neeed defense from Cuba. Are they keeping you safe? Has the US been attacked since 9/11? You can't be 100% safe, but I believe the military and the current administration are doing a stellar job of national defense.
Sometimes the best defense is a good offense, hence the action in Iraq. There are bad people out there. We can't ignore that. I am fully behind what happened in Iraq for many reasons. I have paid attention to what's going on, and for those against what happened, (as I gather you are), we will just disagree, there is no disuading me on this one.
Finally, you state: Maybe military personell SHOULD start thinking for themselves.
The answer is no. A military unit can't function as a group of individuals. Just can't. That won't work. An individual has the option of serving, or not serving in the military, but once in, it's not a democracy. One must do as you are told, it is a team that requires everyone to not question. Imagine a tank line engaging the enemy, but stopping because individual units had questions about the ethics of the confrontation, and the relative strengths of forces.

The putrid invective and ranting by blindly imperialist/militarist/high-horse-ism Freepers has reached new heights.

Allow me to say that I don't owe the military anything either. The WTC attacks were the acts of criminals, not an act of war by an organized government.

When the Canadian hordes storm the border into Minnesota, I will be taking up my own arms in defense of my land. We don't need any more defensive military than a few guys in planes lining the border, a few subs patrolling the coasts, and a few post-adolescent boys manning the big red buttons and SDI satellites while playing Counter-Strike on their PC's.

There is a case in which we DO need a great, big, huge, offensive war machine, however: if our objective is to enforce world peace and hedgemony with our own government.

The point of Brad's article is the time-proven maxim that the greatest threat to your liberty is not other governments, neccessitating huge capacity to wage war----it is the government in your own backyard that robbed its people blind to create that capacity. Other than running off a few nukes from Cuba in the 60's, there has been virtually NO American military action in the past 50 years that has had anything to do with what is rightly the military's only duty: defense of American borders.

Apparently most Freepers deem it unnacceptable to let the rest of the world conduct itself as it sees fit. The world MUST be crushed under the iron fist of American supremacy. The lives of Americans are more worthy of existence---therefore rest of the world must be forced to exist soley for their protection.

Count me out. I would rather keep my liberty and take my chances with the terrorists. Oh, and to all the indignant nationalists foaming at the mouth with fear about terrorism: if you're so concerned about life, you would do well to stop worring about terrorists and 1) don't ride in a car and 2) don't smoke and 3) excersize daily. My favorite hobby is riding high-performance motorcycles on the street and on the racetrack and I risk my life every single time I do it. Why should I care about terrorists?

I would rather die on my feet at the hands of a terrorist than live on my knees as a 1/2 slave to 1) the government that claims to protect me and 2) the rest of you milquetoast, bandwagoning lemmings. It's clear that nothing unites people like a common perceived enemy. You were probably the same people that would gang up on the poor social reject in high school simply to bolster your own social position.

"Live free or die, death is not the worst of evils."----General John Stark