That's a tough one.
Reading your Signature is giving kind of an answer. In my opinion ist you don't need the military to be free. But the military doesn't need freedom to exist.
Furthermore, are we really free, if there is always a fear(even an invisible) to be attacked?
I mean the politicians need that fear to distract their people from issues in their own country.
It is a really tough one.
Maybe i should say that the military doesn't defend freedom but it could defend the security of having freedom.
As long as the politicians don't start to make laws against your civil rights, i mean why the f... the EU made an agreement with the US about bank account informations, the military can defend it.
About Libya in my oppinion it could have been only revenge and the rebellion came in handy. France wanted to sell to Gaddafi a nuclear power plant but he took the offer from the chinese. It is really suspicious that a year or a year and a half ago europe haven't had so many problems with Gaddafi....
Quoting you:
"People I consider to actually fight for our freedoms are ones like Martin Luther King. I consider it a self evident freedom to use whatever water fountain is open to the public no matter my race."
That is the fight for freedom. In your own country. Because you can't bring freedom or democracy that easy in other countries which haven't the same cultural background as yours. e.g Germany after WW2 and Iraq now
Why are you completely against communism? Was there ever a country with real communism? Or just dictatorships with different captions? ;)
