Typical groupthink of the Left. Remember MSNBC's Chris Hayes back in May 2012? Perhaps Steven Salaita should speak to a few actual servicemen or women and get their opinion on the subject...
In addition to donating change to the troops, we are repeatedly impelled to "support our troops" or to "thank our troops." God constantly blesses them. Politicians exalt them. We are warned, "If you can't stand behind our troops, feel free to stand in front of them." One wonders if our troops are the ass-kicking force of P.R. lore or an agglomeration of oversensitive duds and beggars.
Such troop worship is trite and tiresome, but that's not its primary danger. A nation that continuously publicizes appeals to "support our troops" is explicitly asking its citizens not to think. It is the ideal slogan for suppressing the practice of democracy, presented to us in the guise of democratic preservation.
I am neither smart nor foolish enough to define "heroism," but I am comfortable saying the mere fact of being a soldier doesn't automatically make one a hero, just as the mere fact of being in prison doesn't necessarily make one evil.
If we recognize that the troops are in fact human beings, then we simultaneously accept that they are too complex to be reduced to patriotic ephemera. Such recognition is unusual, though. People speak frequently of "our troops," highlighting the pronoun as if it is imperative to their sense of national belonging. It is an act of possession that projects fantasies of virtue onto an idealized demographic in the absence of substantive virtuous practices that might otherwise foster national pride.
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