Fighting for Freedom? I thought were were Free already.

Being a military veteran I am filled with a pride that only soldier who has served his or her country in a wartime environment.  I love my country.  I love my fellow Americans.  I love my soldiers.  And if the commander-and-chief of our military called me up and was like, "Mr. McClellan, I know that you've done your country a great service by traveling across those treacherous waters to fight in a war that you didn't understand and against people who you didn't know and had never harmed a hair on your head.  Everyone here in the Oval Office appreciates your dedication.  However, due to the fact that retention (that's recruitment in rich dummy terms) low and you're already used to being away from the country you love so much, your son, as well as your family  for long periods of time, we're going to have to put you right back on that bird (that's airplane in civilian terms) and ship you right back over there," - I'd be on the first thing smoking.  That's because I'm a patriot and I'm a soldier.  But I also keep it real on the battlefield.  I see and hear comments like, "Soldiers fighting for (American) freedom", "Soldiers fighting for our rights" and the one that really puckered me up was when Sarah "I'm-in-Charge" Palin defended herself from an attack by a protestor by saying, "My son's are in Iraq fighting for your right to protest right now."  Okay, first of all, I don't know of one American who isn't free.  Even Americans who are doing life in prison have freedom.  They just can't go anywhere.  To be honest, there's never been a time when American's weren't free.  Well, except that small smudge on the American History timeline when people were exported from Africa to America and sold as slaves and were denied the same freedoms as everyone else.  But that's different right?  They weren't Americans.  They weren't even Africans (anymore).  They were more like - for the lack of a better word - Dogs.  At least that's how they were treated.  But anyway, that's another story.  Let's not digress like Joe "Billy-Boy" Biden often does and say something that could cause the whole world to explode into tiny little Earth fragments.  We were free before the war began and we're free now.  None of our rights were ever threatened so how on earth are we "Fighting for our rights"?  And Ms. Palin, I'm sorry to inform you, but we are not over there fighting for  that heckler's (don't I sound educated) right to protest.  I would like to think that the reason that we're over there has to do with more than just Americans and their "rights" that we clutch so tightly.