Not All Heroes

Not All Heroes July 8, 2014

US Army Captain Benjamin Summers warns against hero-inflation in a piece in the Washington Post: “Many veterans deserve high praise for their heroism, but others of us do not. Infantrymen who put their lives on the line for a mission, aircrews who flew into harm’s way to evacuate the wounded, servicemen and women who made the ultimate sacrifice — these are some of the heroes I’ve been privileged to know. Applying the label ‘hero’ to those of us who haven’t earned it diminishes the service and sacrifice of those who did. It also gets in the way of constructive debate and policymaking.”

In this situation, decisions about military expenditures, reform of the VA system, and other issues get distorted: “The past year offers an indication of the blinding effects of this problem. Defense spending is a prime example. Too often, policymakers frame discussion of whether to cut the military budget as being for or against the troops; the political battle over the military portion of the sequester is an example of this black-or-white mind-set. But any bureaucracy — particularly one that doesn’t function with a profit-and-loss mentality — can innovate and gain efficiencies when it’s forced to do more with less. If we’re not searching for opportunities to fix, clean and trim our organizations, we’re not being good stewards of them. When we can’t have political discussions that dig beneath the blanket of ‘for or against the troops,’ palatability wins over stewardship. And one of our nation’s most precious resources suffers the long-term consequences.”


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