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Joining
the military doesn’t make you a hero
By Stephen Kinzer BOSTON GLOBE
- DEC. 7, 2014
WHO IS A hero? In today’s
America, it is someone who chooses a military career, puts on a uniform, and
prepares for war. Placing soldiers and veterans on this kind of pedestal is a
relatively new phenomenon. Past generations of Americans saw soldiers as
ordinary human beings. They were like the rest of us: big and small, smart and
dumb, capable of good and bad choices. Now we pretend they are demi-gods.
One reason Americans have come to view soldiers as our only
protectors is that we have accepted the idea that our country is under
permanent threat from fanatics who want to kill us and destroy our way of life.
Yet we also felt this way at the height of the Cold War, and we did not
fetishize soldiers then the way we do now. Perhaps that was because few were
coming home in body bags.
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