Sacred Soldier

About this book

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and military veteran examines both the realities of our military and the worshipful attitude of Americans toward it.

How can our nation stop fighting needless wars, if we keep worshiping the warriors? Why do presidents so easily fool us by using “support the troops” to justify war? Is “Thank you for your service” merely meaningless, or a meaningful sign of a dangerous modern idolatry? Are today’s soldiers truly defending our freedom, or too often suppressing the freedom of other peoples? If our military is so powerful, why has it not definitively won a major war since 1945?

These are questions we seldom hear. Instead, what we see is ballplayers wearing military-style camouflage caps, baseball teams handing out a flag to the “veteran of the game,” and the Pentagon paying the National Football League to stage elaborate military displays like fighter-jet flyovers.

Sacred Soldier: The Dangers of Worshiping Warriors offers a more clear-eyed, warts-and-all view of our military. It argues that we owe our warriors more than those five empty words of gratitude. We owe them honesty as they enlist; we owe them protection from rampant sexual abuse by other members of the military; hesitance to shed their blood in multiple deployments to unwinnable wars; and the highest possible quality of care when they return from battle, wounded in mind, body, and spirit.