From her column:
The category of military hero — warrior — fell off a bit, in part because of the bad reputation of war. Some emerged of heroic size — Gens. Pershing and Patton, Eisenhower and Marshall. But somewhere in the 1960s I think we decided, or the makers of our culture decided, that to celebrate great warriors was to encourage war. And we always have too much of that. So they made a lot of movies depicting soldiers as victims and officers as brutish. This was especially true in the Vietnam era and the years that followed. Maybe a correction was in order: It's good to remember war is hell. But when we removed the warrior, we removed something intensely human, something ancestral and stirring, something celebrated naturally throughout the long history of man. Also it was ungrateful: They put themselves in harm's way for us.She devotes the column to Alvin York, Audie Murphy and Chuck Boyd, but this is a time to honor everyone who has served their country.
Take a few minutes to read it.
Check out Those Who Make Us Say 'Oh!' at the newspaper's Web site.
Originally posted at TONY PHYRILLAS
