What it Means to be a Soldier Now

Something that stuck out to me during this lecture was what it means to be an American soldier. It is certainly something that changes from when we look at conscription to the idea of a volunteer service member. The idea of the soldier in the minds of the American public has been something fluid over the course of history. Not only does it change within the context of a war, but it also changes depending on the viewpoint. Protesters spit on returning soldiers from Vietnam while servicemen coming home from the Middle East have been received by parades.

It seems that Simmon’s idea of the rational individual was the framework by which the American public viewed soldiers in Vietnam-and of course this is a generalization; there was a wide spectrum of views on the war. At the time it was a shame that these young kids were being sent abroad as puppets of the state fighting an unjust and futile war. But now there is much more of a ‘support the troops’ mentality. To speak negatively of a soldier in Iraq-a largely unsupported war- will find flak in casual conversation. Is it possible that we as a nation are moving away from an individualist frame of mind and more towards collective thinking? This would be a hard point to argue, but I do believe there is something to glean from the way we view our soldiers nowadays-fighting for ‘freedom’ and ‘country’ even during an unpopular war.