Ziggae_6
Active member
- Joined
- May 8, 2009
- Messages
- 345
- Reaction score
- 87
- Location
- Louisville, KY Hometown: Chicago
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Very Liberal
I was really struck by this opinion piece by retired US Air Force Lt. Colonel Astore. I think this tendency to glorify military service often leads us to go into war unnecessarily because we see our country as the policing good guys. Yet war is not a place for "good guys," and it puts on a heavy burden on the people who are participants. Thus it should be used sparingly.
I posted the main points with a link to the full piece below. What is your opinion?
Every soldier a hero? Hardly - latimes.com
I posted the main points with a link to the full piece below. What is your opinion?
Still, ever since the events of 9/11, there's been an almost religious veneration of U.S. service members as "Our American Heroes" (as a well-intentioned sign puts it at my local post office). But a snappy uniform — or even dented body armor — is not a magical shortcut to hero status.
A hero is someone who behaves selflessly, usually at considerable personal risk and sacrifice, to comfort or empower others and to make the world a better place. Heroes, of course, come in all sizes, shapes, ages and colors, most of them looking nothing like John Wayne or John Rambo or GI Joe (or Jane).
Whether in civilian life or in the military, heroes are rare — indeed, all too rare. Heck, that's the reason we celebrate them. They're the very best of us, which means they can't be all of us.
But does elevating our troops to hero status really cause any harm? What's wrong with praising our troops to the rafters and adding them to our pantheon of heroes?
A lot.
By making our military a league of heroes, we ensure that the brutalizing aspects and effects of war will be played down. In celebrating isolated heroic feats, we often forget that war is guaranteed to degrade humanity as well.
"War," as writer and cultural historian Louis Menand noted, "is specially terrible not because it destroys human beings, who can be destroyed in plenty of other ways, but because it turns human beings into destroyers."
When we create a legion of heroes in our minds, we blind ourselves to evidence of destructive, sometimes atrocious, behavior. Heroes, after all, don't commit atrocities. They don't, for instance, dig bullets out of pregnant women's bodies in an attempt to cover up deadly mistakes, as the Times of London recently reported may have happened in Gardez, Afghanistan. Such atrocities, so common to war's brutal chaos, produce cognitive dissonance in the minds of many Americans, who simply can't imagine their "heroes" killing innocents and then covering up the evidence. How much easier it is to see the acts of violence of our troops as necessary, admirable, even noble.
Even worse, seeing the military as universally heroic can serve to prolong wars.
In rejecting blanket "hero" labels today, we would not be insulting our troops. Quite the opposite: We'd be making common cause with them. Most of them already know the difference between real heroism and everyday military service. Even the young "Helden" of Wilhelmine Germany knew that service alone didn't make them heroic. With the typical sardonic humor of front-line soldiers, they preferred the less comforting but more descriptive label (given their grim situation in the trenches) of "front pigs."
Whatever nationality they may be, troops at the front know the score. Even as our media and our culture seek to elevate them into the pantheon of demigods, the men and women at the front are focused on doing their jobs and returning home with their bodies, their minds and their buddies intact.
So, next time you talk to our soldiers, Marines, sailors or airmen, do them (and your country) a small favor. Thank them for their service. Let them know you appreciate them. Just don't call them heroes.
Every soldier a hero? Hardly - latimes.com