I think you should be more thankful of and respectful towards the people "in the trenches," and also the technologists, who make it possible for you to live in a safe place and spend your time according to your desires.
Why didn't it?
There are no Mongol hoards waiting to invade, suggestions to the contrary come from those who profit from the fiction and those who buy into it.
No, politicians decided that. That's an important distinction. If we don't like what the military is doing, we need to place blame where it belongs: on the politicians.
There are no Mongol hoards waiting to invade
The military is still highly important. Think about the role it played in the Revolutionary War, Civil War, and WWII, to name a few wars that most consider to have been justified for the US to enter. More recently, the Gulf War where Hussein invaded Kuwait. I personally believe that in the future, Iran and/or North Korea will acquire a nuclear weapon that threatens US citizens. Somali pirates. Who knows what else will come up. We still need a military.
Do you recognize the problem here?
Regardless, this whole thought that we should be "thankful" to the American military is absurd. They have billions of dollars to spend every year, why do they also require thanks? Do tanks run on thanks?
No. Thanks is needed because without the blinding effect of popular societal support, their actions do not stand for themselves. The military requires praise to be shovelled onto it like coal into a furnace 24/7 so that its hired guns can continue to lie to themselves and sleep at night. Listen, if you think they should have thanks, then do it yourself; however it is not your place to scold others who want nothing to do with it.
You are seriously undereducated on this. Were you born this stupid, or did you put effort into it?
At the very least, go read about how the war was actually executed, and to what degree politicians influenced military decisions (where to bomb, etc.). Read about the push to let natives do more of the fighting, and read about how shitty the South Vietnamese government was. There were a lot of factors involved, and few of them were failures of the military.
militaristic view of the world
That I think the military is a tool we need, does not make my worldview "militaristic." (Truly, I think the military is needed to ensure peace, but that's beside the point.)
should impose our views
I'm not imposing my views, I'm sharing my views. It's rational discussion. If you act as if sharing views equals imposing them, than you're giving a free bone to the dogs that want to destroy free speech (and believe me, they're more common than people think).
Not all tools are neutral. Tools also have intended uses and inherent affordances towards certain uses.
Yes, you can use a knife to kill and also to cut a piece of a cake. An RPG? Much less neutral.
>Without having a military, we would be up shit's creek.
Yes, but if you did not have a military, lots of countries around the world would also be better off. You know, from certain imperialist, self-serving, resource grubbing, our-idea-of-society-spreading kind of actions...
