Let us consider “hero,” not this person or that but the word. To consider how this word is being used in the media is to review to whom it is applied. That’s unfair to the person in the headline — “A hero remembered: [City name here] memorializes hometown soldier killed by helicopter crash in Iraq” — which hurts the family and confuses the issue. It’s not fair to communicators who require precise yet commonly understood words. Even the communicators and leaders comforting the bereaved need clear language.
The word’s supposed opposite, “coward,” has been changed. “Hero” seems merely to have been diluted. This confuses important issues and delays their democratic resolution.
Who mangles such vital words? All of us. The family and friends driven to welcome home a loved one in a casket following military service, as well as hometown leaders (even likable ones) eager to score political points. Commentators grabbing for adjectives on deadline, or deliberately to make points. And national leaders out of sincere patriotism or as propaganda.
The guys who planned and executed the 9/11 attacks one week shy of six years ago were widely called cowards. Was that first by pundits, regular people or the American government? It may be impossible to trace. Comic Bill Maher famously said in response: “We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it’s not cowardly. Stupid maybe, but not cowardly” (source, CNN).
Nearly every presidential administration refers to all terror attacks and those dictators that it cannot control as cowardly. Think Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein. Think Moammar Khaddafi. Oh wait, he’s OK now. But ask people without pointing to examples, and they’ll see cowardice as a passivity, an avoidance of action, especially staying safely clear from acts of heroism.
When an enemy acts, it’s not cowardice, but betrayal, treason and the like. Worse, an enemy generally acts out of belief he’s in the right. An old-time coward acts to preserve himself, from harm or from shame, though those can come later.
I should prefer the new definition. The childhood definition might define me as a coward. What have I ever done for anyone, especially that which involves even the slightest amount of risk? At first impulse, nothing is recalled. After reflection, there was the time … and the time … and when this … and should Xx be included? Yet details collide with humility, not to mention what qualifies as just a Scout’s good deed. I may not have any hero in me to date, but humility I’m great at. Cowardice now means hate and extraordinary recklessness. Nope, not me.
This in turn has to mean that heroism is an act or series of acts of goodness, bravery, courage or valor to the point of self-sacrifice and beyond. This is the common, even childlike, Superman-Batman view. Adults realize that superheroes’ absence of fright is fiction, really naivete, that heroism generally comes from moving through fear.
Enlisting in the military is a brave act, no matter what considerations lead to it. Since the draft ended in the 1970s enough young men and women have enlisted to keep the country safe. Signing up takes bravery, but joining contains other decisions, personal ones, about how the young adult views his or her future with its educational, career, family and even social opportunities. These sometimes have greater weight than patriotism, but signing over your life for a few years or forever still takes guts.
Some draftees in the world wars, Korea and Vietnam, despite their by-definition reluctance, later proved themselves true heroes with acts of bravery, courage and valor. Firefighters and office workers displayed old-fashioned heroism in the minutes before and hours after the World Trade Center towers collapsed. That simultaneously “heroism” was diluted to even coincidental selflessness demonstrates that honest debate scares people.
The new play My Father’s War by my friend Bob Ford (to premiere in May) proves by facts heroism six decades ago came from ordinary people in extraordinary times (the protagonist and some whom he observes). Training is vital, but so much more is involved, from upbringing to impulsive decisions and even chance, to hear them tell it.
With horrifying regularity — eight times a year in the last few years? — a soldier, marine, airman, sailor or guardsman comes home to Northwest Arkansas in a casket from the Near or Middle East. All any loved one, leader or dictionary-toting literalist should say is these fighters were remarkable and their sacrifice infinite. -30-
