I have definitely also noticed the OP's experience with the "silent aka greatest generation" being treated with rose-colored glasses, and the reference to "Saving Private Ryan!" It's right there in the name, and I thought it was ridiculous when I first heard it. It is very similar to the hero worship that is often afforded to every single member of the military, which I also do not understand. There are so many other people/professions that make sacrifices and do amazing things, but somehow if you're in the military you're instantly a hero that should be stopped on the street and thanked for your service. I have plenty of gratitude for people in the military who have made sacrifices, but I'm also keenly aware that the military is a large cross-section of society complete with murderers, rapists, drug dealers, racists, just a person looking for a job, and plenty of regular folks just getting by. And as Jack Reacher points out at some time in the novel series, there's a non-trivial number who specifically sign up to kill other people. But they are to be stopped and thanked too because, you know, military.
You're welcome, and thanks for your support.
I served for over two decades to help protect your First Amendment right to write paragraphs like that.
This is exactly the kind of reaction I feared and, unfortunately, it kind of proves my point. I do not intend to convey ingratitude. You and other military members do have my support, and those that made sacrifices to protect all of our rights deserve gratitude. I also served (in a slightly different capacity) for about 20 years, right alongside great military members. I don't expect any platitudes about my "service." But why interpret my statement as ingratitude? Why assume I'm not aware of my rights and how they've been protected? My point is that not all military members are great -- that's all.
My apologies that my statement caused offense. I would also invite you to reflect on why my saying that not all military members are heroes causes such a reaction and assumption that I am ungrateful. Some military members have done tremendous things for the country and given their lives in service. Some have been supreme a-holes. And most have been somewhere in-between. Does the current POTUS deserve a very special "thanks for his service" as Commander in Chief (twice, no less)?
Up here in Canada we're in the midst of a massive leadership crisis over grievous misconduct within our military that leadership has ignored and suppressed for years. A quote from CBC:
"Experts say they can't think of another military anywhere else in the world that has seen so many senior leaders swept up in scandal at the same time."
So yeah, we're very comfortable up here with holding two things at once: intense respect and gratitude for what our military does for us, and heavy criticism of profoundly unethical conduct at the same time.
Two things can be true at once, both at the organizational level and at the individual level. Our military is simultaneously deserving of respect AND deserving of condemnation. And we have individual soldiers who been exemplary soldiers AND are horrible, unethical people and have ended up in jail for it.
As a parallel, there are plenty of healthcare professionals who are also deserving of criticism and prosecution, and don't get a universal pass for their behaviour just because either they save lives or their profession does.
Holding organizations and the people within them accountable is how we keep them ethical and effective. Suppressing criticism is how institutions develop the kind of toxic culture the Canadian military is struggling to fix, and failing miserably to do so I might add.
One of our most prominent female military service members literally quit a few years ago because the reports on the massive scandal and the extent of the silence and lack of accountability was so disgusting that she saw no path forward. That's what happens when there's a lack of accountability for awfulness.
She publicly asserted that the military should even drop the name "Operation Honour" from its current campaign to address the problems because the problem is so pervasive and so unfixable that the name is a meaningless joke at this point.
Should our militaries and the people who serve it be respected for the massive benefits it/they provide to our countries? Absolutely. Should that absolve them from criticism? Absolutely not.
One of my close friends is a General and we've had so many deep, difficult, complex conversations that veer into profoundly existential territory because of his lifelong dedication to military service and his full awareness and participation in the unavoidable practice of not taking accountability. He says that with each increase in rank, he takes a step closer to being targeted in this issue because it's literally impossible to have any leadership in the military and not be complicit. The only way to not be part of the problem is to not serve, and that's a brutal rock and hard place to be stuck between.
