Quote:
Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall
Well, that's rich. I guess it depends on your perspective and that's kind of the entire point, isn't it?
You can easily make a movie about Confederate soldiers who save their buddies from Union soldiers in situations where they are extremely outnumbered or who are the subject of awful tactics by the Union army. If you remove the whole point of the war and just show what's going on on the battlefield with no other real context then you will surely have many people watching the movie who look at the main characters as heros.
Now who's turning this conversation into a yes/no proposition? Of course we were fighting some pretty evil people. But, Shirley, there were Iraqis who were involved because they wanted to take up arms against an army that had no business being in their country.
I am completely with you. I think, next to "literally," it's the most over- and incorrectly-used word in the English language.
TM
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You make good points (but you still need to calm down). Mostly I think this underscores the problem with the term "hero." WTF does it mean? "Pure good guy?"
Using your Confederate soldier analogy -- I could certainly imagine such a story, portraying an individual as brave, selfless, whatever. I assume that the movie Das Boot has at least some likeable or sympathetic characters, and they are fighting for the Nazis.
I don't consider Kyle a "hero." Mostly, I found it an interesting and sad story, and he did get pretty f'd up by the whole thing. If he did anything "heroic", it was trying to help other f'd up vets when he came back, not killing people in Iraq.
