This is a sensitive topic, and I'm going to get heat for it, I know.  This isn't meant to be an insult to people in the military.  I support you guys as long as you aren't douchebags about it (I do meet alot of douchebags from the military, though).  Thanks for your service and yada yada.  This is more about how the military is used by the politicians.

So we always hear, "thank the military for your freedoms," "thank a soldier for being able to say what we want."

I know the miltary and its actions are the aspects of government I'm not suppose to question according to many right wing conservatives.  Many will say that I'm unpatriotic for bringing this topic up.  But, I think that a big part of patriotism is to question the government and my taxes are going to pay for the military, which is a major part of the government.

Ultimately, the military answers to the politicians.  It's a controversial on whether the politicians are representing the people or the corporations.  A big theme in this Occupy movement has to do with corporate influence on the government.  A few retired elites from the military have even sounded like hippies when they admit to being glorified thugs for our corporate structure rather than defenders of our freedom.  Do we go in for corporate interests time to time?

Let's go through some military operations since World War II.

World War II - Okay, I will admit here we were ultimately protecting our freedoms and security.  If nothing was done, the Western half could have easily fallen to Japan and the Eastern half could have fallen to Nazi Germany - eventually.  And if that were to happen - well - many would end up in concentration camps from both sides alot worse than what we did to the Japanese Americans (we weren't completely good here as well - we did revoke their freedoms based on race).  So yeah, we defended our freedoms and security.

Vietnam - We defended one dictatorship from another dictatorship.  The difference being, one was a communist dictatorship.  It doesn't look like we were fighting for anyone's freedoms.  We were really defending an ideology and preventing the spread of one ideology we disagree with.  Don't get me wrong, I am completely against communism.

More recently  ...

Iraq - This one seemed to be more about vendettas among the politicians than any other reasons.  They made a story about how there are WMDs or connections to the Al Queda and people believed Bush and co.    Maybe there was oil interest, but I don't want to get heavily into that debate.  We did liberate their people to and extent.  But, how did this war defend our freedoms.

Afghanistan / Pakistan (Osama and Al Queda) - I do agree with this one as it helped defend our security from known terrorists that attacked us.  We did need to bring justice to the terrorists.  However, the whole Muslim world doesn't need to be held accountable for the actions of a few.

Libya - By helping out, we did defend their freedoms, but we really didn't defend our freedoms.  I don't know where I stand on this one.

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.

So what do you think.  Is it just propaganda to get people to support whatever military action we do for what ever reason the politicians have?  I'm not saying Democrats and Republicans are any different.  Many Democrats fight what I consider frivalous wars as they represent the same lobbyists.  Should we be more truthful and say we are definding other people's freedoms from other nations?

humm i think it's propaganda, No wmd found, Libya was going to drop the gold on the US.

War is the continuation of policy by other means. Unfortunately, owning to mobs not understanding how real politics works and how states fight each other, we need casus belli "good" enough for stupid hippies to agree with so we overcomplicated the simple thing with all possible sorts of means to build up public consensus before acting.

Hence, the quote in my signiature.

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? ;)

They are fighting for Israeli freedom

War is a terrible thing and usually planned by rich people and they send the poor. I mean no disrespect to anyone who is or has serving (including family and friends), but I hope it's an option that will be avoided whenever possible.

So to answer your question, I think the answer is to some extent both, but unfortunately, it's often propaganda.

Depends on what war, battle or fight. In many cases you could argue that the military is fighting to preserve our freedom and our future freedom. Battles today can drastically change the dynamic of the world tomorrow.

As an economic system, it's incompatible with human nature.  People are naturally competitive and by that nature, society progresses.  Communism lowers peoples' drive for quality if there is no competition.  Even if Trotzkyism took off, which was communism without the brutal dictatorship aspect, I don't think the economic system could have supported itself.

That's not to say that the capitalism system in America doesn't need some repair.  For one, the government needs to go back to representing the people and not the corporate heads and biggest shareholders.  Also, the rich - poor spread seems to be getting worse all the time.

Nope. This is cultural thing, really.