Honoring Soldiers

I thought again of Wesley Clark's comment about the sentimentalization of soldiers when I saw Time's Person of the Year, "The American Soldier." Not an individual soldier, mind you, but a collective entity, The American Soldier.

I haven't yet read the Time story. But it struck me that this is a classic illustration of how people can exercise "a sentimentality unsullied by first-hand knowledge of soldiering," as Clark put it. We can all buy one of these and leave it lying visibly on the coffee table during the holidays to show how we "honor the troops."

I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I may do it myself. But the point is that vague sentimental tributes to The American Soldier are no substitute for voters taking their responsibility as citizens seriously when it comes to thinking about war.

Because we're not sending "The American Soldier" to war. We're sending individual men and women there. Individuals like the ones remembered in this feature in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Profiles of Americans Who Have Died.

Men like 27-year-old Frederick Miller, Jr. (no relation) of Hagerstown, Indiana, who re-enlisted in the Army after the 9/11 attacks, killed Sept. 20 in Ramadi, Iraq, leaving behind his wife Jamie, two daughters and a son that he will never see on the way. Women like 43-year-old Sharon Swartworth, a 26-year Army veteran killed Nov. 7 in a helicopter crash who leaves behind a husband and an eight-year-old son. Men like 37-year-old Kelly Bolor, a twin from Lahaina, Hawaii, killed Nov. 15, leaving his wife who was also named Kelly and a 3-year-old son.

No, we should never be careless of the lives of the Frederick Millers and the Sharon Swartworths and the Kelly Bolors. Because they are the ones fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, not some sentimental abstraction called The American Soldier.