by Robert Jensen, CommonDreams.org, August 23, 2010
When the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division rolled out of Iraq last week, the colonel commanding the brigade told a reporter that his soldiers were “leaving as heroes.”
While we can understand the pride of professional soldiers and the emotion behind that statement, it’s time for Americans — military and civilian — to face a difficult reality: In seven years of the deceptively named “Operation Iraqi Freedom” and nine years of “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan, no member of the U.S. has been a hero.
This is not an attack on soldiers, sailors, and Marines. Military personnel may act heroically in specific situations, showing courage and compassion, but for them to be heroes in the truest sense they must be engaged in a legal and morally justifiable conflict. That is not the case with the U.S. invasions and occupations of Iraq or Afghanistan, and the social pressure on us to use the language of heroism — or risk being labeled callous or traitors — undermines our ability to evaluate the politics and ethics of wars in a historical framework.
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But the war criminals in such cases think they and their troops are heroes!
Mr Bush and Mr Blair in our days and Mr Hitler a few decades earlier were convinced of their heroism and that of their armed forces for the heroic missions to accopmplish. Mr Hitler was not able to assert that his mission was over, but Mr Bush said ‘mission accomplished’ in Iraq! More than one million Iraqis killed by the invaders and Iraq destroyed!!