Soldiers get a new name
The Defense Department is looking for a new way to refer to the men and women in the U.S. armed forces. With possibilities ranging from troops, fighters, soldiers, servicemembers, and combatants, it looks like warrior may be the forerunner.
The term probably evokes images of bows and arrows or medieval knights more than a bunch of buzz-cutted Americans in camouflage, but that seems to be precisely the point.
In what is depicted as a means of employing an all-inclusive word — i.e., one that doesn’t exclude women — the situation strikes me as a little shady, and I’m guessing this is more of an image-makeover than feminism.
What’s wrong with “soldier?” According to the International Herald Tribune, we’re in need of an all-around term to reference troops, marines, and those in the airforce that isn’t as complicated as “servicemember.”
And why doesn’t “troop” fit that description?
“Troops presents plural difficulties. One troop is a group. When you say ‘two troops’, do you mean two military units or two individuals? When we say ’send in the troops,’ we usually mean large numbers, but when speaking of two or three members of our armed forces, we say soldiers or special forces or whatever branch of the armed services they serve in. One person is not a troop”.
Right. Still, warrior strikes me as a pretty misleading euphemism, romanticizing a war that the majority of Americans don’t support.
Perhaps a more honest nomenclature would be “killer.”
