It’s common knowledge we should respect the military.After all, the common rhetoric goes, the soldiers overseas are fighting for our freedom.If any American mentions the military in a less-than favorable light, their fellow citizens will often remind him or her it was the military who earned the right to free speech.If soldiers earned me the right to free speech, then I am sincerely thankful.Hopefully, speech is free enough for me to criticize the organization from which this freedom allegedly springs.I don’t know what enemy’s freedom-hating machinations the troops overseas are keeping us safe from. Surely not all the troops overseas are fighting for freedom. The Spanish-American War was just an imperialistic land-grab. The 1953 overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran was just a power play. The recent war in Iraq was just a …Well, I don’t really know why we caused 4.7 million refugees and 100,000 civilian deaths at a cost of $3 trillion — the equivalent of more than four Katrinas, 30 Sept. 11’s and 1,000 “cash for clunkers” programs. If it was for any reason, it wasn’t to protect our freedom.Troops overseas put your freedom in jeopardy. When we sent doughboys into the trenches of the first world war, we empowered the allies to levy massive penalties on Germany that paved the path for Adolf Hitler.More recently, the U.S. Navy provided support for the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Witnessing the bloodshed was the birth of Osama bin Laden’s hatred of American imperialism.”I couldn’t forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy,” bin Laden said in a 2004 speech. “The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand a conversation that doesn’t include a weapon?”When he responded to the attack on unarmed civilians with an attack on unarmed civilians, the U.S.’s constellation of 700 overseas military failed to keep us safe. Despite spending trillions of dollars over the decades, the U.S. Department of “Defense” couldn’t even defend its headquarters.Having troops overseas doesn’t make you safer, even against enemies capable of waging symmetric warfare. The Soviets stayed their hand because they feared mutually assured destruction, not because our troops were spraying Agent Orange on overseas rice paddies.Think about the actual limits on your freedom. The reason you can’t buy alcohol on Sundays, purchase competitive health care from across state lines or use Fed Ex to ship envelopes is because of government decrees.Sure, it may throw you the odd bone, but is a couple thousand dollars in scholarship money worth the $400,000 every household owes for future government liabilities?It doesn’t matter how you answer that question because you don’t get a choice. The bonds our treasury sells overseas are backed by your future earnings. You’ll spend your entire life paying off the debt your elders used the government to incur.The government takes its cuts of your paychecks, wages an unwinnable war on drugs, jails more than 2.3 million citizens and employs almost 1.4 million active-duty military personnel.And that’s why it’s lunacy to suggest troops abroad are fighting for your freedom. The troops are employed by the one organization that limits your freedom more than any other.At best, soldiers can prevent foreign governments from sending their troops to protect your freedom.Daniel Morgan is a 21-year-old economics senior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_dmorgan._____Contact Daniel Morgan at [email protected]