Good points - The only thing the military can do for our freedom is to repel an attack from an invader who, in occupying, would offer us a less free society than we have now.
With a nation full of rifle-toting rednecks, a hostile foreign power can never succeed. To obliterate us, they would be forced to nuke us.
Bad points - So, for our military to have been effective in protecting our freedom, the enemy must be (1) credible; (2) willing and prepared to attack; (3) likely to reduce our freedom if he wins; and (4) repelled by either the action, or the threat, of our military.
Without our military I believe there woiuld have been many countries in the past 200+ years that would have met requirements 1, 2, and 3.
This circumstance has never obtained in our history, and probably never will.
And again, I believe this is due DIRECTLY to our military.
Hitler and Germany never constituted a credible threat to the US
Never let this man into public office.
Hitler's Germany was the most advanced country, next to the USA, in the world. Hitler would have consolidated Europe, Russia, AND the mideast and come a running after the USA. We probably would have been speaking German before 1950.
Truman bombed Japan because the Japanese demanded as their only condition of surrender that the emperor remain emperor. They continued to demand this after both bombings, so Truman just gave in. The bombings were for nothing.
It seems to me that it is a fairly well known fact that more US lives were saved by this than, almost, any other single event in WWII.
We don't need a standing federal military. If someone invades, militias can pop up, with rifles and perhaps a government commission (while we still have forcible government) to get the job done and then disband until the next invasion.
Sure, if you want to prove it every 50 years to the next tinhorn dictator that doesn't remember the last time we opened a can of USA mean on someone.
The militias better have more than rifles though. Somebody better be passing out the grenades, LAWS rockets, machine guns, aircraft, anti-aircraft missiles, etc, with which todays battles are being won. Otherwise we will be toast in short order.
And the knowledge and training on how to use them. How many "Just Another Joe"s from the street could climb into an M1 Abrams, or pick up a surface-to-air missile launcher, or a TOW-missile launcher and know how to use 'em?