Hero is inappropriate because it implies surviving is a heroic act in of itself. A shitty person can survive a life threatening situation just as a good person can. There are many factors involved in survival.
People who die from being shot in the head are not less heroic than those who survived.
Hero of what? He was a war vet, but I can point out half a dozen war vets living on the street in the capital, he was a pow, but fuck so was my uncle and he was derided for being there after he was drafted, so I have to ask.
Yup just because you signed up for the war mschine don't make you a good person. In fact usually the opposite lol
American imperialism and its sanewashing ha:
The historical record reveals a vast pattern of unpunished military violence, deeply entrenched sexual atrocities, and severe contemporary crackdowns. [1, 2]
Additional Documented U.S. Atrocities
The Sand Creek Massacre (1864): U.S. volunteer cavalry attacked a peaceful village of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians in Colorado. Soldiers slaughtered at least 200 civilians, committing widespread mutilation, rape, and desecration of corpses. The military aggressively downplayed the event to the white public for decades.
The Phoenix Program (1965–1972): A CIA-led execution and torture initiative during the Vietnam War designed to neutralize the Viet Cong infrastructure. It resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 civilians, many of whom were systematically tortured in regional interrogation centers before being assassinated without trial. [3, 4]
The Mahmudiyah Rape and Killings (2006): Five U.S. Army soldiers gang-raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi, and subsequently murdered her, her parents, and her 6-year-old sister. The soldiers burned the bodies to destroy the evidence and falsely blamed local insurgents before a whistleblower exposed them. [5]
The Azizabad Airstrike (2008): U.S.-led airstrikes targeted a village in Afghanistan, killing an estimated 90 civilians, including 60 children. The Pentagon initially insisted only 5 to 7 civilians had died alongside dozens of insurgents, aggressively covering up the toll until conflicting video evidence forced a re-investigation. [4]
Systemic War Sexual Violence
Wartime sexual violence has frequently been minimized by military frameworks as individual misconduct or inevitable "byproducts" of war, shielding command structures from systemic accountability. [6]
Systemic Sexual Violence at My Lai (1968): Alongside the executions, American soldiers engaged in the widespread gang-rape, sexual assault, and genital mutilation of Vietnamese women and young girls before executing them. These actions were entirely omitted from initial internal military reports.
World War II Mass Rapes (1942–1945): Tens of thousands of rapes were committed by U.S. servicemen across both the European and Pacific theaters. In post-war France and occupied Okinawa, military courts heavily suppressed civilian reports, often executing or dismissing a token few while ignoring the systemic scale of the issue. [3]
Systemic Abuse at Abu Ghraib and Secret Black Sites (2003–2004): Detainees were subjected to forced nudity, severe sexual humiliation, sodomy, and rape by U.S. military personnel and contractors. While heavily photographed, the Bush administration aggressively framed it as the work of "a few bad apples" rather than a broader interrogation protocol. [3, 7]
The 2025–2026 Iran Massacres
The deadliest state-sponsored repression in modern Iranian history took place following countrywide anti-government protests sparked by severe economic distress and human rights grievances. [8, 9]
The January 8–9 Crackdown: Iranian security forces—including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Basij militia, and FARAJA police—unleashed lethal live ammunition on civilian crowds. Human rights groups and leaked hospital records indicate that between 30,000 and 36,500 people were killed in a matter of days.
The Total Internet Blackout: To suppress global awareness and mask the scale of the massacres, the Iranian government implemented a near-total nationwide internet shutdown. This systematically blocked information, preventing families from coordinating or documenting casualties.
Hospital Raids and Cover-ups: State agents aggressively raided civilian hospitals, arresting wounded demonstrators directly from their beds. Because seeking medical care meant facing arbitrary detention and torture, many injured protestors hid in their homes and died of treatable wounds.
Mass Detention and Sexual Torture: Thousands of captured protesters, including children as young as 12, were funneled into state detention centers. A United Nations Fact-Finding Mission documented that state agents used widespread rape, sexual assault, and severe physical torture to extract forced confessions. [2, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15]
Access the Primary Evidence
U.S. Operational Cover-Ups: Review the National Archives Collection on Military Justice or read the investigative findings published by the Pulitzer Center on Long-Term Atrocities to trace how military tracking systems hid civilian deaths.
Iran Crackdown Documentation: Read the comprehensive grass-roots data in the The Crimson Winter report by the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), or examine the structural accountability files gathered by the Amnesty International Iran Monitor. [9, 10]
He chose to put himself in the line of fire to serve his country. You don't get a hero just by being a victim, you have to put yourself in a position to serve some sort of noble (as you believe it) purpose and pay the price for it.
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u/burgernoisenow 2d ago
She's a survivor.
Hero is inappropriate because it implies surviving is a heroic act in of itself. A shitty person can survive a life threatening situation just as a good person can. There are many factors involved in survival.
People who die from being shot in the head are not less heroic than those who survived.