I’m told the former Armistice Day, co-opted by the warfare state to celebrate war rather than its absence, is not the time to remind my fellow taxpayers that no war in the past seventy years has benefited them in any way whatsoever, much less preserved what freedom they have left. I disagree. What better time than when the myth Americans are freer because of these wars is echoing from every media outlet, statehouse and social media channel to point out the harm this propaganda continues to do?
No American would be less free if Washington, D.C. had abstained from invading Afghanistan, Iraq, or Africa (the invasion nobody talks about). On the contrary, they’d be freer, richer, and would suffer less blowback terrorism than they have these past seventeen years. No American would be less free if Washington had stayed out of Vietnam or Korea, either.
In response to to these rather obvious observations, we’re often regaled with the somewhat irrelevant claim that people join the military to “defend the Constitution” and it is only politicians who are to blame for the unconstitutional and immoral wars constantly waged by the DC empire.
The reasons people join have nothing to do with whether American taxpayers benefit from any of this. But let’s be honest here. The overwhelming majority of people who join the military do so because it greatly improves their economic situation. At what point, after decades of unconstitutional, unnecessary wars of aggression, will people who join the military voluntarily bear some responsibility?
Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Part One and A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.