William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and teacher of History at the Pennsylvania College of Technology wrote an important piece this week at TomDispatch.com about why it’s wrong to associate military service with heroism.
“By making our military generically heroic,” he writes, “we act to prolong our wars. By seeing war as essentially heroic theater, we esteem it even as we excuse it.”
The hero label is for us who don’t go to war. We mindlessly deploy the term so that we might feel warm and fuzzy about sending others “in our name.” And the more often we invoke heroism, the better we feel.
However, as Astore points out, most of our troops reject the label. They know at their core that they did not do something “heroic,” that acts of heroism are rare in war. When it comes right down to it, the sole motivator of the soldier in the trenches, the soldier at the front line, the soldier driving a Humvee watching out for IEDs, is getting home. That soldier will do what is necessary to save his/her own life and the lives of fellow soldiers.
The term is weak with overuse, and, I suggest, that each time it is utilized in the presence of a veteran, it increases his/her personal pain and guilt. The vet knows his/her motivation in war and heroism is a tremendous pressure that few, if any, are able to live up to. So they don’t.
Is our attempt to “support” our troops possibly contributing to the suicide rate?
Other than slapping a bumper sticker on the rear of our vehicles, which is about as uninvolved as we can be, what can we do to really support the troops?
They aren’t heroes. They are human beings, just like us, who have been sent to do the unthinkable, the unconscionable, and they don’t want to be called heroes when they were only doing what they were told and trying desperately to get back home.
Posted on August 2nd, 2010 at 2:13 am by Lin McNulty
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