The language of war: "Warriors" and "Heroes"

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on January 27, 2013 at 4:41 AM, updated February 28, 2013 at 10:38 PM
Earl Kisler, the former prisoner who was tortured after North Koreans seized the USS Pueblo in 1968, is a fascinating guy to talk to. In the course of our phone conversation, he brought up the indiscriminate use of the word "hero" to describe anybody who puts on a military uniform. They're not all heroes, he correctly points out. Many of them are just people doing their jobs.

*Note: Kisler never claimed to be a hero himself, either, despite the remarkable resilience he displayed as a prisoner of war who was tortured by his North Korean captors.

Of course, heroes exist. You would certainly say, for example, that the guys who got Bronze Stars with Vs (Staff Sgt. David Albright and Sr. Airman Chadwick Boles) yesterday qualify. Had they not risked their own lives to assist their fellows, more people would have died. Nobody can say they didn't act heroically.

But when troops come home and the TV news reports call every one of them a "hero," I think it cheapens the word. A hero is someone who does exceptional deeds, and by definition, that means not ordinary. Without diminishing the respect and appreciation the troops deserve for their service, I wish we could dial back the use of the word "hero."

Which brings to mind a terrific column by John Burgess, a law professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. In the December issue of Proceedings, the Naval Institute's monthly magazine, he wrote the following. (I would link, but it's not available online except to members. If you are one, here's the link.)

"Is 'Warrior' the right word?"
by John Burgess

I received my first copy of Proceedings in January 1962 and have been reading it ever since. Over those 50 years, successive editors have maintained a steady commitment to an open forum for discussion of the Sea Services. The themes have changed with the times, in terms of threats, technologies, strategy, and role of the Navy and Marine Corps within our larger society, but not the tone of Proceedings .

Then in the past decade, the term "warrior" began to appear in articles, commentaries and (always the most telling sign of any trend) advertisements. For 40 years, I read about sailors, Marines and soldiers, their issues and challenges, but nothing prepared me for the abrupt adoption of self-identification as warriors. In 1940, Samuel Eliot Morrison wrote "John Paul Jones, a Sailor's Biography." In 2006, the Naval Institute Press published Joseph Callo's "John Paul Jones: America's First Sea Warrior" -- evidently considered an improvement on the simple use of the word "sailor."

The change carries with it undertones of bombast and aggression foreign to our traditions. Those who served in our toughest battles had been content to call themselves many things. But not warriors.

The Civil War was our first great mass struggle. No one embodied a cold-hearted willingness to kill more than Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman. But with their informal ways, casualness about the niceties of military dress and profound skepticism about the paths of glory, they would not have considered themselves warriors. And the men they served would have felt the same. The U.S. and C.S.A. volunteer regiments of that war took and inflicted casualties and bore the casual deaths of disease with enormous fortitude. But North and South alike would have ridiculed the idea that they were warriors as an affectation that undercut the motives for which they fought -- freedom for slaves, preservation of the Union or defense of states' rights.

In World War II, our enemies emphasized warrior virtues -- and were loathed for it. The "Greatest Generation" identified a job to be done and took it to its conclusion, but did so without self-promotion or illusions of glory. Militarism was a quality to be suppressed, not exalted. The war's great lesson was that citizen-soldiers could indeed stand up to those inculcated in a warrior ethos. The men who manned the screen of Task Unit 77.4.3 (Taffy 3) in the Battle off Samar in 1944 fought with the same tenacity and courage as their opponents and turned the tide of battle, but they would have greeted an assertion that they were warriors with embarrassment or mockery.

The warrior concept began to take on currency after our armed services, in the wake of Vietnam, moved away from broad citizen participation. It was perhaps seen as a way to animate and validate the experience of an all-volunteer force and a means to foster pride in the profession of arms in a way that more prosaic labels arguably cannot. It gathered momentum after 9/11, reinforced during the runup to the Iraq War.

Other factors might be at work as well. As the culture wars have intensified and insecurities about the long-term primacy of the United States have grown, invocation of the warrior is both a rallying point for some domestic constituencies and an implicit message to some external threats. It also resonates with changes in popular culture. Video games emphasize individual participants against disembodied and often inhuman enemies. Courage (of a surrogate nature, to be sure), hand-to-hand combat and quick coordination -- warrior skills -- take precedence over more abstract or civic virtues, whether they be long-term planning or cooperation with others.

But those virtues matter. "Warrior" is not just a word. It is also a statement of attitude. Achilles is the greatest warrior in western literature, the hero of its first great poem. At the climax of "The Iliad," he defeats the Trojan hero Hector -- the better man by every measure of family and civic virtue, but ultimately the loser on the battlefield -- and his sole goal is the abasement of his enemy. Achilles the warrior would have understood desecration of Taliban bodies: It is the culmination of the warrior ethos, the ultimate assertion of superiority in combat.

But that ethos is at odds with our values as a society and inimical to our interests as a nation. The most sacred spot at Arlington National Cemetery is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. If the word "soldier" is good enough for those interred therein, it should be good enough for the rest of us.

--John Burgess