Facebook group: soldiers are not heroes
I have to leave it thanks.
senojekips
Active member
That, is what I call a really "bullet proof" defense (no pun intended). I would certainly believe him.I think soldiers are heros. Certainly here in Russia a survey already showed that people are 80% more likely to trust the word of a man in camouflage than one in a suitFact. ---snip---
Kvachkov was tried four times and acquitted by jury each time... His main defense: "If we wanted to kill him, he would be dead today."
That man is our hero, at least.
Korean Seaboy
Active member
I wonder how many has actually served in the military?
Complete idiots, and they're not even thankful that the only reason they have the ability to voice their stupid opinions is because of the very people they're against. They should be protesting war, and if the name was something like "War is not a game", then I will fully support it, but I am amazed they even have the guts to have that as a group name
Complete idiots, and they're not even thankful that the only reason they have the ability to voice their stupid opinions is because of the very people they're against. They should be protesting war, and if the name was something like "War is not a game", then I will fully support it, but I am amazed they even have the guts to have that as a group name
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AZ_Infantry
Active member
Sorry to those in disagreement, but soldiers are not heroes by definition. No one I served with would ever refer to themselves as such. You may fancy us as heroic for offering ourselves to a cause greater than ourselves, but there are numerous reasons for doing so and not every one of them is completely altruistic. Ergo, classifying all soldiers as "heroes" is a misnomer at best and a complete farce otherwise.
My definition of a soldier: "One who accepts a risk not equal to the relevant, tangential rewards in service to a nation and its people." That is, serving itself is the reward. The pay, the college benefits, the housing are mere placards that are both necessary and attractive to some who find military conditions and benefits as greater than they might elsewhere achieve. That does not change the risk factor, however, nor does it in any way apply any factor of ignorance - we all knew the risks to ourselves, and our selfish motivations for service were weighed and measured against the metric of serving others.
If you want to honor a soldier's commitment, don't call him or her a hero. Just call them your equal, thank them for their service, and acknowledge the potential for sacrifice they themselves did. A handshake and a beer says FAR more to any soldier or veteran than does shallow flattery, regardless of its intent or personal truth.
As for the website? They aren't worth my time to dislike. Their own narcissism will be their own undoing. No reason for me to be upset at all. I didn't serve to be liked. I served because, to me, it was the right thing to do. No Facebook garbage can ever take that away from me. They don't have the power to undo the past, regardless of how much I screwed up my future. Hate me, laugh at me, call me names - my 214 doesn't have anyone's opinion on it.
My definition of a soldier: "One who accepts a risk not equal to the relevant, tangential rewards in service to a nation and its people." That is, serving itself is the reward. The pay, the college benefits, the housing are mere placards that are both necessary and attractive to some who find military conditions and benefits as greater than they might elsewhere achieve. That does not change the risk factor, however, nor does it in any way apply any factor of ignorance - we all knew the risks to ourselves, and our selfish motivations for service were weighed and measured against the metric of serving others.
If you want to honor a soldier's commitment, don't call him or her a hero. Just call them your equal, thank them for their service, and acknowledge the potential for sacrifice they themselves did. A handshake and a beer says FAR more to any soldier or veteran than does shallow flattery, regardless of its intent or personal truth.
As for the website? They aren't worth my time to dislike. Their own narcissism will be their own undoing. No reason for me to be upset at all. I didn't serve to be liked. I served because, to me, it was the right thing to do. No Facebook garbage can ever take that away from me. They don't have the power to undo the past, regardless of how much I screwed up my future. Hate me, laugh at me, call me names - my 214 doesn't have anyone's opinion on it.
Good post AZ. Can't knock that.
But would you consider that volunteering for the battle- front is an heroic calling?
'
I also liked your Facebook reference. Some of us screw up big-time; 'the moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on.' But every one of us is unique.
But would you consider that volunteering for the battle- front is an heroic calling?
'
I also liked your Facebook reference. Some of us screw up big-time; 'the moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on.' But every one of us is unique.
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AZ_Infantry
Active member
A heroic calling? Yes. But so is being a firefighter, a police officer, or a teacher.
I was a soldier because I wanted to be. What's heroic about doing something you want to do? True heroism is doing something you DON'T want to do, but do it anyway because you agree that sacrificing for another trumps the probable return on investment.
"Hero" is a term that we throw around way too loosely today. You're not a hero for doing the right thing when everyone is looking. You're a hero when you do the right thing in temptation of the wrong thing when no one is looking - and if anyone ever finds out about it, you did it wrong.
To me, a hero dies with their secrets. Anything short of that was heroic, yes. But heroes are silent.
Korean Seaboy
Active member
Yet that doesn't mean all soliders aren't heroes, as the group's name suggests
AZ_Infantry
Active member
Oh, without a doubt! The group is obviously attempting to disparage all service members, but who here hasn't experienced that in one way or another at one time or another? If the house is not as planned, the carpenter takes the brunt of the blame even though the architect drew up the plans wrong. Thus is the way of things, right or wrong. It is far easier to blame the troops than it is to hold the politicians accountable, so the simple-of-mind gain their needed sense of articulated disdain through that avenue.
Sadly, serving in the military has just as much stigma and hyperbole associated with it as does mental illness. It holds true that you have to serve to understand serving every bit as much as you have to suffer chronic depression to truly grasp how it affects lifestyle.
They have a right to their opinion, just as I have a right to opine that they are narrow minded simpletons incapable of holding the true violators -- politicians -- accountable for what they so vehemently disagree with.
84RFK
Active member
Most heroes are shipped back home in a box, so thanks God that soldiers are not automaticly heroes.
And then again, how can you tell a hero from a coward, or any regular man/woman serving somewhere?
Not by medals, that's for sure!
Just have a look at the pictures of Kim Jong Il and his staff of North Korean Christmas trees, wonder what they have done to be decorated like that...
So what makes a hero?
During WWII the RAF tried to bomb the Gestapo headquarter in Oslo, tricky task as the building was located in the centre of the city, surrounded by a lot of apartment buildings in the same block.
And sure enough, bombs went astray and made carnage everywhere else than in the Gestapo HQ.. :-(
While cleaning up the mess, they found the remains of a German soldier in a park close to where one of the bombs fell, on his knees, curled up in a kind of fetus position.
When they started picking him up in order to put him on a stretcher they discovered a girl (age 3-4 years) in his arms, clenched tight to his chest, and alive!
An eyewitness who survived mentioned seeing a german soldier running accross the street and snatching this little girl from the sidewalk as he ran into the park just seconds before the bomb fell.
I don't know if they ever managed to identify him, and in the headlines on page 5 he wasn't mentioned by name, there were plenty of casualties in the chaos that night.
Nobody will ever know if this was an act of heroism, or if he just acted out of instinct, for all I know it could have just been the natural thing for him to do.
Now he's dead and forgotten, no medal, just a grave along with a lot of others.
And as we did our best to demonize the Germans at the end of the war, records of him no longer exists.
And then again, how can you tell a hero from a coward, or any regular man/woman serving somewhere?
Not by medals, that's for sure!
Just have a look at the pictures of Kim Jong Il and his staff of North Korean Christmas trees, wonder what they have done to be decorated like that...
So what makes a hero?
During WWII the RAF tried to bomb the Gestapo headquarter in Oslo, tricky task as the building was located in the centre of the city, surrounded by a lot of apartment buildings in the same block.
And sure enough, bombs went astray and made carnage everywhere else than in the Gestapo HQ.. :-(
While cleaning up the mess, they found the remains of a German soldier in a park close to where one of the bombs fell, on his knees, curled up in a kind of fetus position.
When they started picking him up in order to put him on a stretcher they discovered a girl (age 3-4 years) in his arms, clenched tight to his chest, and alive!
An eyewitness who survived mentioned seeing a german soldier running accross the street and snatching this little girl from the sidewalk as he ran into the park just seconds before the bomb fell.
I don't know if they ever managed to identify him, and in the headlines on page 5 he wasn't mentioned by name, there were plenty of casualties in the chaos that night.
Nobody will ever know if this was an act of heroism, or if he just acted out of instinct, for all I know it could have just been the natural thing for him to do.
Now he's dead and forgotten, no medal, just a grave along with a lot of others.
And as we did our best to demonize the Germans at the end of the war, records of him no longer exists.
AZ_Infantry
Active member
I don't care who you are or what your nationality is - if you rescued a little girl in the midst of the confusion of the world blowing up around you, you are a hero. Period. The normal human instinct is to duck, run or freeze; it is not to run to a little girl, cart her off to a safer place, and shield her with your own body. That is a decision, not instinct.
Even it was his own daughter where the parental instinct would have played in, he's still a hero in my eyes.
senojekips
Active member
Has anyone looked at this site recently.
I just had a look, and I'd say that they are not fairing very well in the promotion of their chosen cause and are gettting it in the neck, from almost every side.
I just had a look, and I'd say that they are not fairing very well in the promotion of their chosen cause and are gettting it in the neck, from almost every side.
AZ_Infantry
Active member
You reap what you sow.
Now, when is it Phelps and his WBC bunch's turn to "get it in the neck?"
There's a future to look forward to!
rattler
Active member
NOTE that you are mixing apples with peaches: "War heroes" is a species quite distinct from "heroes" as the angle of vision on them calls for different parameters.
IIRC the thread was about the generalized "hero" and whether a soldier has to be dubbed so just for having chosen the profession, and it was not about the "war hero" (latter most probably will see a soldier as protagonist anyway).
Rattler