I wouldn’t consider just the act of being in a military force to be “heroic.” By that logic, both the Polish conscript defending his homeland and the Wehrmacht invading it were heroes. Hundreds of millions of people have been in military forces throughout history, for causes and factions of both solid and questionable virtue. Neither is getting your leg blown off by an booby-trap, being shot, or taking a hit from an RPG - that’s just being exceptionally unlucky. If you perform an action far above and beyond the expectations and duties of your job, with exceptional courage and risk to oneself, then you are a hero. Being the poor bastard who had a bullet with his name on it is tragic, not heroic.
Frankly, I’m rather wary of the popular movements that call every last REMF a “hero.” It’s an easy way to shut down criticism and close examination of the military and its activities, as could be seen particularly clearly during the early years of the Iraq War.
(a) Working for a commercial company in a job that you can quit anytime without criminal outcome that is regulated by OSHA and other agencies to reduce the likelihood of death or injury…
and
(b) Signing up to military service where walking off the job is going AWOL and there are actual people (multiple, some times large numbers of people) shooting at you with the intention of killing you. Oh, and they also use rockets and IED and what ever else they can come up with. Oh, and there isn’t any OSHA… because death is an accepted part of the job.
When someone signs up for military service, for the entire time that they’re in the states, they can avoid combat by simply going AWOL or mentally cracking up. Once they’re overseas, they can still crack up mentally and get out of there.
Unless you’ve ever spent time in or near a combat zone, you really can’t comprehend the stress involved in going to sleep at night knowing that you’re well within range of scud missiles. Unless you’ve worked as law enforcement or in a combat zone, you can’t comprehend what it is like to walk down the middle of a street where anyone could be waiting to shoot at you from any window.
There is no way that a person could fully grasp these things before signing up. And some (many?) can’t handle it once they’re there and they do crack up.
So, I think the ones that stick it out and manage to get most of themselves home deserve some credit.
It is not up to them who or why they fight, that is part of the job description. If you want to complain about the incentive for combat, take that up with the politicians.
But, I do agree that hero is thrown around too much. I cringe every time they refer to the people working in the towers on 9/11 as heroes. not a single one of those people went into work knowing that those buildings would be hit. The VFD and PD who responded… they are heroes. But not the victims who were simply earning a pay check like any other day and happened to get snuffed.
You have to understand the situation in the United States. The U.S. economy comprises 25% of global wealth and its people 5% of the world’s population. But, the U.S. accounts for nearly half of global “defense” spending. Its PR and official stance is that democracy, free markets and personal freedom are supreme values. But, it also has a long history of propping up dictators, stirring up war and overthrowing representative democracies.
Soldiers have a dangerous job, though not as dangerous as linemen, construction workers, miners, fishermen, commercial divers and similar trades. However, those people all feed, build and power America. The benefit they provide the country, in both economic and quality of life terms, is indisputable. Not so with the endless wars and occupations our service members take part in.
So the soldiers HAVE to be touted as heroes. In order both to deflect criticism as to how they are used and to justify the grossly bloated state of the armed forces in general. To paint them any other way is equated with a lack of patriotism. Even to question it is attacked as being immoral. Could someone demonstrate that for me, oh, yes . . . thanks. People doing real, productive work don’t have to be called heroes. The value of their endeavors is easily demonstrated.
And I can say that, as a vet. I’m a hero, bitches.
Ka-bang. I love hearing this sort of thing; I think the unreasoning awe and worship that Americans are supposed to feel for veterans and the military system is one of the greatest flaws in modern American culture, and I’m glad to hear someone on the inside show the same opinion.
My own take is that being willing to sacrifice one’s life for others is heroic. The D-Day invaders- definitely heroes. Pacific fighters in WW II, ditto. Wars we have no business being in, not so much. Sure, they would lay down their lives for us- that makes them worthy of our respect. But the lack of threat posed to us by Iraq or Vietnam makes the mission not heroic at all. I’m all for giving them the best medical care and a free education and support for their families and tax breaks and employment preference. But the constant verbal fellation that some feel compelled to give the troops makes me want to vomit.
starts thread about people’s bodies being damaged in combat argues people are somehow willing to sacrifice damage to their corporeal self out of boredom
forgets we’re talking about people damaging their body
I’d find this line of reasoning much more valuable if it wasn’t completely obvious to any observer that no war that the US has been in in the last 20 years has actually been fighting to protect American interests.
Heroism is the sugar coating we give to a job that is most likely to give you life long post traumatic disorder, at the very least, and a missing limb or two (or worse) at the very most. Having a shredded body and psyche appeals to no one, but cover it with the glittering shroud of heroism; et voila, you da man!
Well, that’s my take on it, but **GreenHell **said it better…
I think it actually hurts the US. In the last decade the US military and naval forces have been unable to bend two small nations to their will a massive failure on their part with great repercussions for the US, and yet no one seems willing to undertake the necessary introspection. Post Vietnam tins was done, to great success.
Absolutely. I’m a vet too, and I’m vastly prouder of the work I do now as an electrical engineer than I ever was as a missile systems technician in Iraq. I make electric power safer, more reliable and more economical. There are old people who won’t die this summer because the work I did means they can afford to run the air conditioning.
But you’re right. Nobody needs to call me a hero because I know exactly what I do. Soldiers need smoke blown up their asses because “Vehicle maintenance, PT and combat training” isn’t really much to be proud of.
The most I can say about being in the Army is that I worked on the same type of system that killed Uday and Qusay Hussein. And I don’t like to think about it, but some Bradleys and TOW missile systems I worked on probably killed a few innocent Iraqis circa 2003-2004. And frankly, getting standing ovations in the airport didn’t boost my morale one bit.
