About Defending Those Freedoms

You know, the ones al Qaeda, which used to run Iraq before we came in and threw them out, hates so much, the same ones our exhausted military is over there defending. Terrific post at Whiskey Fire on the rhetoric and the reality.

The cold truth is that not a single one of the Americans who have fought and died in Iraq have done anything at all to protect the "freedoms" of a single American citizen. And the colder truth is that without a profound rethinking of the whole point of the American military in this new century, it will be far less a guarantor of our democracy than a permanent temptation available to those inclined to seize it for illiberal ends.

Considering the degree to which the military has become politicized -- and Christianized -- under the Bush administration (along with every other government operation), I think that's a valid concern.