You don’t protect my freedom Our Childish Insistence on Calling Soldiers Heroes

[earthside]

35. Precisely the best time to make this point.

The horror of the 'Great War' ... World War I and Armistice Day is more than appropriate for making the point that war is hell and it is a racket.

The end of the Great War is noted at 11:00AM on the 11th day of the 11th month; that day commemorated for the final end of the atrocity and massive death ad destruction it caused and the hope that it would never happen again.

Of course, that day has morphed into something nearly the opposite, especially in this country.

There are very few heroes in war, except that we have truly so cheapened the word that it almost means nothing. I'm nearly 60 years old and in my youth the word did mean something and there were few heroes, they were exceptional people. Not since the Vietnam backlash, however. Since then there has been a marketing effort to turn all military, police and emergency employees into 'heroes'.

One place to start to stop more wars is to get realistic about its consequences -- losing ones leg or eye in combat is not 'heroic' -- it is a personal tragedy for that individual. We don't need any more glorification and calls to be a hero for that kind of sorrow.