Is a hero a hero only if you like the war?
: Cori Dauber reports this from Andy Rooney on Imus:
His complaint was with the practice of considering all the soldiers, airmen, Marines, sailors and Coastguardsmen serving in Iraq as heroes. Most soldiers in Iraq, he said, “they’re not heroes, they’re victims. They got trapped in the Army.”
And what about the WW II analogy? There was “no question about the ethical, moral, righteousness of our war against the Nazis.” Today’s situation is “not at all the same.” (Even if you don’t think we should have gone to war in Iraq, I still don’t understand how people can argue against the moral righteousness of the war as a humanitarian intervention. It’s just beyond me.)
But Rooney continued: “They just don’t have a righteous war to fight,” and that’s the only reason today’s military forces aren’t a Greatest Generation. “They don’t have an occasion to rise to.”
Fascism is fascism, and it is always a righteous cause to fight fascism with an appetite for global conquest.
I agre with Cori on all points and, as usual, disagree with Rooney.
These soldiers were not trapped in the Army; they volunteered.
Why is getting rid of murdering fascists in Germany different from getting rid of murdering fascists in Iraq?
And — in the context this discussion comes from, it’s Bush talking about the war on terrorism and not just the war in Iraq — this generation most certainly does have the occasion to rise to: the defeat of terrorism and Islamic mass murderers.
: And by the way, how come when a man goes on a rampage destroying buildings throughout his own town and nearly killing his own neighbors, he’s known as a “nut” while people who do that in Iraq are known as “insurgents?”
