Don't insult US soldiers by saying they "die for our freedom." The Gulf War and the Iraq War were unrelated to US freedom; the policymakers don't even claim that anymore. Neither in 1990 nor in the year 2001 did the country of Iraq threaten our freedom. Those wars were strategic, related to perceived to "regional security," control of petrol resources and an urgency to get the country past "the Vietnam Syndrome." Restating a canard that is very cynically used as a Pied Piper call to send (mostly poorer) Americans into harm's way does not honor veterans. On the contrary, it disrespects them and betrays an unwillingness to look deeply into these matters of life and death. If we could see that phony line for what it is – a con used against the US public to make us accept something we would otherwise find to be an atrocity - it would go a long way toward preventing future American wars, starting with Iran.
At this point, it is worth remarking that the person (such as myself) who dares to utter the blasphemy that American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are not dying for our freedom, but for much more cynical geopolitical aims, is often greeted with vitriolic charges of being "anti-American." What these responses fail to recognize is that the individuals acting in an anti-American way are surely those Americans with political power who are orchestrating these pointless wars and sending soldiers to die, to be maimed and to suffer PTSD. There is perhaps nothing more "anti-American" than sending young men and women Into harms way for ill-conceived and shortsighted goals that are then lied about.
