"The cult of the uniform"

Minnesota Public Radio

As a guest on Minnesota Public Radio, Jerry Lembcke, associate professor of sociology at the College of the Holy Cross, talks about Americans' superficial understanding of the military and its role.

Lembcke, a veteran of the Vietnam War, comments specifically on how high regard for the military, though deserved, often "blunts criticism and any kind of clear thinking about what the wars are really about."  With regard to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lembcke said, "All the conversation was about the people who were sent to fight the wars and not the wars themselves.  And, you know one of the things that all this does too, is it inoculates the soldiers themselves and the military itself from consideration about what the wars are about, and that's kind of an insult, in a way, to the service members."

 

This "Holy Cross in the News" item by Kristine Maloney.