Quote of the Day – Goodness and Liberty Edition
I believe that the American military has done more to preserve and foster goodness and liberty on Earth than all the artists and professors in America put together. – Dennis Prager. Why I am not a Liberal
A lot of good stuff. I had a hard time picking a quote, read the whole thing.
He can certainly believe anything he wants, but he’s most certainly wrong. The american military has done some great things, but they’ve also done some dispicable things. Currently, they’re into the latter…
Certainly any military force, and a really any group of people, will do bad things along with any good they do. But even if I give you that the current war is entirely unjust, and that no gains have been made in goodness and justice, I do not think that comes close to mitigating prior gains. While we probably could not has won WWII solo, the rest of the world wasn’t likely to be able to do much without our military. And defeating Hitler and Hirohito certainly spread goodness and liberty.
A more balanced look at the Iraq war shows good and bad. While incidents like what happened at Abu Greib were wrong, and some of the stuff at Gitmo was at least questionable, they pale in comparison to what was happening in Iraq before that at the hands of Saddam and his two delightful sons. And remember, a lot of this relates back to the 1991 invasion of Kuwait (who we liberated,) and Saddam’s subsequent refusal to cooperate with terms of the conditional cease fire.
So has the US Military done despicable things? Yes, however I would argue mostly on a personal scale (a person or group of people acting apart from higher command.) But on balance, they have done far more to good than evil.