We get an e-mail newsletter from our church at intervals. Before the Memorial Day weekend, the church administrator exhorted us to remember and pray for those who had “died defending our freedom”. I can’t think of a single person that I know of who died defending my freedom. None of the troops who died in Iraq or Afghanistan were involved in the defense of my freedom. The same goes for the Balkans or Somalia or the First Gulf War. I can go all the way back to the 1950s before it even becomes arguable that s soldier, sailor or airman died defending my freedom. I suppose that a service member who got killed while training could indirectly be said to have died defending my freedom since his service may have acted as a deterrent to an invasion by some foreign foe, but this is something of a stretch.
The Korean Conflict, in which my Pappy served, was supposedly meant to forestall the expansion of Communism so as to keep it from our shores. If that’s so, troops who died in Korea might be said to have died defending my freedom (or my future freedom, my having been born later). But what if that rationale was so much hooey, as it seemed to be in the case of Vietnam? I am not sure I buy that the North Koreans threatened our freedom or even the Red Chinese. I don’t think they could have pulled off an attack on the US. If anything, having to pay for the Cold War militarization and living under the supposed threat was more of an affront to American freedom than anything the Communists ever did.
I don’t necessarily buy that WW2, where many of my family members served, was to preserve American freedom. We fought two brutal dictatorships in Germany and Japan in order to replace them with just as brutal dictatorships in Russia and China. In what sense did any of the massive expenditure of lives and money and curtailment of liberty add to our freedom as a nation? If anything, we came out less free, permanently militarized and mobilized for war.
Don’t get me started on the interventions in Central America and the Caribbean. And nobody even argues WW1 was anything but a colossal waste all around. I don’t think Pancho Villa aimed to oppress us, and the insurgents in the Philippines seemed to want freedom for themselves, not to take ours away. Spain was no threat to American freedom. I suppose the Indians of the West were conspiring to impose their will on the rest of America? I don’t see any freedom defenders at the Little Big Horn other than the Sioux.
I seem to have gotten all the way back to the War Between the States without a credible defense of freedom. I don’t know how to call this one. The Yankees aimed to deprive the Rebels of freedom and did their best to destroy the Constitutional Republic that the founders had constructed. But I reckon the Confederates were no lovers of liberty, what with conscription and slavery, and I have no confidence that a South Victorious would have been any more freedom oriented.
Mexican War? Freedom was not implicated. Earlier Indian Wars? Again, I’m not aware of a threat to American freedom from Indians. War of 1812? Eureka! If the US had lost the War of 1812, it might have been reabsorbed in to Great Britain; therefore, this was a fight in defense of freedom, albeit unnecessarily provoked by the US government. Not quite 200 years did it take to get back to a freedom defender.
Certainly, folks in later wars may have been led to believe that they were defending freedom, and this doubtless motivated many of them in their fighting. But they were wrong.
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You defeat your own argument vis à vis the War of 1812 by stating that the United States provoked the conflict. That said, you are correct to state that... the War of 1812 is the first in a long series of expansionist warfare waged by America in the 19th Century (as you have mentioned, Mexicans, Spaniards, Cubans, Phillipinos experienced this as well). I will not even include warfare against the aboriginal peoples of North America in this list. The USA waged warfare against the various tribes on a more or less continous basis from the first days of the Republic until the close of the 19th Century. Only periodic truces interupted that conflict.
However, back to the War of 1812. There was never any designs on the part of the Crown to re-annex the United States in the wake of this conflict, in fact, the government of Great Britain did much to avoid a breach in relations with America in the Spring of 1812. And, once the war had commenced, Britain's stated war aims were defence of the Canadas, protections for the Indian Confederacy, and recognition of British and Canadian rights over some disputed territories (the Maine boundary and the disputed extent of NWC and HBC lands in present day UP Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota). As these territories contained more British subjects than American citizens at the time, it is a stretch to argue that this was an assault on US freedom. I would give you that the twon of Michilimackinac would have been annexed under a more pro-British settlement of the conflict, but again, the citizens of that outpost were of mixed nationalities (Canadien, Canadian, British, American).
As the war aim of the United States was the annexation of British North America, it is better argued that the freedom of the BNA colonies was the freedom in question, not America's.
I know that "sailors rights" is a well taught theme in the United States for the war, however this is a non causal factor at the time war is declared. THe relevant sections of the Orders in Council had already been repealed - Madison and Congress could have backed down from a conflict upon receipt of this knowledge.
so my question is, your freedom from what?
sdhow can you say that the us won, they invaded canada the british drove them back, (so i guess you can say the british won)how can you say loss of freedom when the us was killing Native Americans ect
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