The United States of America has the most powerful military in the world, with over two million troops in all branches of service. Even with such a large portion of the U.S. population being involved in the military, a sickening trend has risen up since the Vietnam War: the disrespect of, and in some cases hatred for, our soldiers and veterans.

So often I hear famous people talk badly about our troops, as an example when TV host Bill Maher said that our troops “are psychopaths” and “wartime rapists,” and when New York Times editor and cartoonist Ted Rall called our troops “poorly paid contract killers.”

The two most common objections by Bill Maher, Ted Rall, and other people, said against our troops and veterans are that our troops and our military are unnecessary, and that soldiers join the military simply to enjoy the experience of killing people.

As a country, we would be nothing today if it weren’t for our armed forces.

Without the size of our military our nation has maintained over the years, the U.S. would have crumbled years ago.

According to the Congressional Research Service, it took the deaths of almost 360,000 American soldiers before the Civil War finally ended, almost 120,000 American troops before World War I ended, and almost 400,000 U.S. military men before World War II ended.

If the U.S. didn’t have a military of the capacity it had during these times, there would be no America today. Think about what would have resulted if it were not for our military.

What would have happened if we had lost the Civil War? We would still be a “house divided” as Lincoln put it.

How about the Second World War? I don’t think the Nazi German flag or Japanese flag would look pretty over the White House. And the Cold War? I’m 100 percent sure that every American would love the famine, persecution, ethnic cleansing, and totalitarian state from living under the Soviet Union.

Just in the past ten years the threat of radical Islamic terrorism has been literally knocking at our door, and so removing the U.S. military as these people would like would leave us defenseless in this present danger.

ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Assad, Al Baghdadi, the Iranians, the Iraqis, and the Afghans, are all currently in open war or conflict with either the U.S. or our allies. Without our military to hold them off in the Middle East, their forces would come pouring into Europe and the Americas.

At this point, we’ve established that our military is necessary. However, in order to fully educate the people of our society, the other popular objection must be corrected as well: that our troops join the military because they enjoy killing people.

This claim is ludicrous and frankly insulting to the people we should respect.

People don’t have to work as soldiers, they find a civilian job  which doesn’t have an almost three percent chance of dying during their career.

Plus, people who are only looking out for themselves would never volunteer for a job to sweep for landmines on a scorching-hot desert road when they know that they could be blown apart any second.

Even with the courage to take the risk of the job, a large number of soldiers aren’t even willing to pull the trigger on an enemy in an engagement out of necessity, let alone enjoy the act. According to a study on the writings of World War II generals done by RAND Institute researcher Russell W. Glenn in the late 1990s, 10 percent of troops never fire their weapon in an engagement and almost 25 percent fire their weapon but do not aim at an enemy soldier.

You cannot, and can never, say that you follow American values if you hate the military and all of the men and women who risk so much.

The practice of disrespecting and hating our military is truly Un-American

So, to finalize, the disrespect of our military is incompatible with the “American values” of our great nation, and one cannot fully support the United States while disrespecting the military. As much as these antagonists want to deny it, soldiers are some of the best people the United States has to offer.

That, is the truth.

Drew Forthman is a Copy Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.