Before Mr. Stack's daughter retracted her statement, she and many TEA partiers considered her father a "hero" for bringing attention to injustices committed by the government (in her mind, anyway). We know that a man killed by Stack's intentional crashing of his plane was Vernon Hunter, a 67-year old father, husband, Vietnam Vet and IRS employee (to mention nothing of his many other circles). Understandably, Hunter's family disagreed with Stack's daughter's calling her father a hero, especially after his carefully planned attack, anti-government and selfish motivation, and disregard for others.
What is a Hero? A Martyr? A Terrorist?
What is bravery? What is patriotism?
Each of these words is loaded with meaning, and the meaning differs between people and peoples. It changes our appraisal of events and of the individuals involved. These words are political words and intentionally used to impart a meaning that furthers the agendas of the politically powerful. People who use these words are very aware of the emotional impact on the audience.
Can we identify any minimal criteria for Hero? or the others?
Joseph Campbell once said, "A hero is someone who has given his life to something bigger than himself."
Politicians, when pandering, er, speaking in front of troops on camera, will often refer to them publicly as heroes. But do the troops feel like heroes, and do they think of themselves as heroes? How often do we hear from them that their motivations for joining were other than god and country, and what compels their actions once out on the field?
from Chris Hedges:
Just remember," a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel told me as he strapped his pistol belt under his arm before we crossed into Kuwait, "that none of these boys is fighting for home, for the flag, for all that crap the politicians feed the public. They are fighting for each other, just for each other."
It may be that Falstaff, rather than Henry V, is a much more accurate picture of the common soldier, who finds little in the rhetoric of officers who urge him into danger. The average soldier probably sympathizes more than we might suspect with Falstaff's stratagems to save his own hide. Falstaff embodies the carnal yearnings we all have for food, drink, companionship,a few sexual adventures, and safety. He may lack the essential comradeship of soldiering, but he clings to life in a way a soldier under fire can sympathize with. It is to the pubs and taverns, not to the grand palaces, that these soldiers return when the war is done. And Falstaff's selfish lust for pleasure hurts few. Henry's selfish lust for power leaves corpses strewn across muddy battlefields.
The imagined heroism, the vision of a dash to rescue a wounded comrade, the clear lines we thought were drawn in battle, the images we have of our own reaction under gunfire, usually wilt in combat. This is a sober and unsettling realization. We may not be who we thought we would be. One of the most difficult realizations of war is how deeply we betray ourselves, how far we are from the image of gallantry and courage we desire, how instinctual and primordial fear is. We do not meditate on action. Our movements are usually motivated by a numbing and overpowering desire for safety. And yet there are heroes, those who somehow rise above it all, maybe only once, to expose themselves to risk to save their comrades. I have seen such soldiers. I nearly always found them afterward to be embarrassed about what they did, unable to explain it, reticent to talk. Many are not sure they could do it again.
Hedges goes on to talk about the myth of war and how we
War itself is venal, dirty, confusing and perhaps the most potent narcotic invented by humankind. Modern industrial warfare means that most of those who are killed never see their attackers. There is nothing glorious or gallant about it. If we saw what wounds did to bodies, how killing is far more like butchering an animal than the clean and neat Hollywood deaths on the screen, it would turn our stomachs. If we saw how war turns young people into intoxicated killers, how it gives soldiers a license to destroy not only things but other human beings, and if we saw the perverse thrill such destruction brings, we would be horrified and frightened. If we understood that combat is often a constant battle with a consuming fear we have perhaps never known, a battle that we often lose, we would find the abstract words of war--glory, honor and patriotism--not only hollow but obscene. If we saw the deep psychological scars of slaughter, the way it maims and stunts those who participate in war for the rest of their lives, we would keep our children away. Indeed, it would be hard to wage war.
For war, when we confront it truthfully, exposes the darkness within all of us. This darkness shatters the illusions many of us hold not only about the human race but about ourselves. Few of us confront our own capacity for evil, but this is especially true in wartime. And even those who engage in combat are afterward given cups from the River Lethe to forget. And with each swallow they imbibe the myth of war. For the myth makes war palatable. It gives war a logic and sanctity it does not possess. It saves us from peering into the darkest recesses of our own hearts. And this is why we like it. It is why we clamor for myth. The myth is enjoyable, and the press, as is true in every nation that goes to war, is only too happy to oblige. They dish it up and we ask for more.
War as myth begins with blind patriotism, which is always thinly veiled self-glorification. We exalt ourselves, our goodness, our decency, our humanity, and in that self-exaltation we denigrate the other. The flip side of nationalism is racism--look at the jokes we tell about the French. It feels great. War as myth allows us to suspend judgment and personal morality for the contagion of the crowd. War means we do not face death alone. We face it as a group. And death is easier to bear because of this. We jettison all the moral precepts we have about the murder of innocent civilians, including children, and dismiss atrocities of war as the regrettable cost of battle. As I write this article, hundreds of thousands of innocent people, including children and the elderly, are trapped inside the city of Basra in southern Iraq--a city I know well--without clean drinking water. Many will die. But we seem, because we imbibe the myth of war, unconcerned with the suffering of others.
Yet, at the same time, we hold up our own victims. These crowds of silent dead--our soldiers who made "the supreme sacrifice" and our innocents who were killed in the crimes against humanity that took place on 9/11--are trotted out to sanctify the cause and our employment of indiscriminate violence. To question the cause is to defile the dead. Our dead count. Their dead do not. We endow our victims, like our cause, with righteousness. And this righteousness gives us the moral justification to commit murder. It is an old story.
Here is Vietnam Vet, father of killed American soldier, and scholar Andrew Bacevich talking about the way society puts soldiers up on a pedestal:
No doubt Stack's family and supporters think of him as a hero.
My sense of empathy helps me understand why people who have been bombed and occupied and affected through US foreign policy may genuinely feel that desperate people who strap on bombs or fly planes into buildings are martyrs. And I also see the motivation for politicians in a country where war is a racket to label people of other cultures an Anti-American and terrorists.
I've witnessed firsthand many times the selfless acts of human beings -- soldiers, medics, civilians -- and I've studies history and power enough to know that labels such as hero, martyr, terrorist, are used and perpetuated with a particular agenda in mind. (Note the exploitation of Pat Tillman or Jessica Lynch as recent examples.) Some of you might remember Meteor Blades' commentary on Rebecca Solnit's writing on 9/11.
Labels distract us from addressing the legitimate grievances that people have and which they too often unfortunately resort to violence to express.
It's too bad that a wealthy man like Stack felt he needed to fuel up and fly his plane into a government building where many people worked, including Mr. Turner, to bring attention to his cause. He took away from himself and his family more than the government could. What a waste.