People try to glorify war, particularly those who aren't actually fighting in them. People tend to make heroes of those who are fighting in them.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In war, people find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, and in those circumstances, they act in extraordinary ways. In war, you see people at their very best and their very worst, acting in ways you could never imagine. War is human drama at its most epic and most intense.
We tend to think of heroes only in terms of violent combat, whether it's against enemies or a natural disaster. But human beings also perform radical acts of compassion; we just don't talk about them, or we don't talk about them as much.
When we think of war, the tendency is to picture young soldiers only in their military roles. To a large extent this dehumanizes the soldiers and makes it easier for society to commit them to combat.
America's addiction to violence is partly evident in the heroes it chooses to glorify.
Heroes are those who can somehow resist the power of the situation and act out of noble motives, or behave in ways that do not demean others when they easily can.
War isn't just about bravery and courage and jingoism and patriotism. It's also fundamentally about grief. And the people that go and do the fighting and the dying are never the people who actually benefit from the fighting and the dying.
It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.
For one thing, I don't think that anybody in any war thinks of themselves as a hero.
There is no glory in war, yet from the blackness of its history, there emerge vivid colours of human character and courage. Those who risked their lives to help their friends.
I think that you can honour the sacrifices of a common soldier without glorifying war.