Everybody in the Military Today is a War Hero
by Bryce Martin

In the early 1970s, not long after a lottery system was implemented in the latter part of the Vietnam War, the military draft was abolished. Just prior to that, Local Boards called men classified 1-A, 18 1/2 through 25 years old, oldest first.

It's now an all-volunteer military.

Today's all-volunteer way of thinking is wrongly blurring with the past.

In 1964, for example a good many men, given the choice, would not have opted for military duty. It's didn't matter. There was a draft.

So, who were the heroes back then? If you were drafted, but would not have went given the choice (as one does today), and you were captured by the enemy, survived and returned and served your time, were you a hero? After all, you didn't want to be captured by the enemy and you didn't want to be wearing a military uniform in the first place. Would you be any different than someone in your exact position who joined freely and eagerly?

Today, since it is an all-volunteer affair, you can make the case that everyone starts out as a hero just by joining, and hero hash marks increase as more heroic acts follow. Everybody's a hero.

So, was someone such as John McCain a hero merely because he was captured by the enemy? He was from a military family and joined on his own, but, remember, there was a draft on, and the draft had to influence thinking. "Hey, there's a draft on anyway, why not join and make the best of it." Would a reluctant draftee in the same predicament as McCain be a hero as well?

Does being captured by the enemy automatically make one a war hero?

It certainly does now.

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