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Given Toby Keith’s outspoken love and support of the U.S. military, it may come as a surprise that he never served any time himself. However, his dad did, and it made a lasting impression on Keith. “My father was a soldier. He taught his kids to respect veterans. It’s that respect and the thank-you that we have a military that’s in place and ready to defend our nation, our freedom,” Keith told the American Forces Press Service (via The Tennessean) in 2009.
Keith wrote his controversial 2002 hit “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)” in honor of his father, who died in a car crash the previous year. “I thought about my dad being the veteran he was and the flag-flying patriot he was. He did lose his right eye, he did come home, and he never did gripe about it, so that’s the reason I wrote the song for him,” Keith told CMT.
The singer often came under fire for his lack of military service. Still, he defended his armed forces track record in an interview with The Boot. Keith blamed the absence of a draft for never enlisting. Still, he insisted that he’d visited more war zones than many soldiers had. “I’ve been on some bases on some front lines that a lot of enlisted people haven’t,” Keith said. “I have soldiers and marines [ask me], ‘Where’d you go?’ And I’ll tell them, and they’ll go, ‘Dang, I didn’t even go up there!’”
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Source: NewsFinale
