Suppose Joe sincerely wants to serve his community. He is even willing to die to do so.

Joe sincerely believes his Uncle Sam is a good person. Joe sincerely believes that Uncle Sam only wants what’s best for his community, that Uncle Sam is generally competent to determine what’s best, and that Sam generally makes the most reasonable or justifiable decisions in light of evidence available to him. Now suppose Joe pledges for the next four years to do almost anything Sam tells him to do, even if the actions seem on their face heinous. If Sam tells Joe to jump, Joe will ask, “How high?” If Sam tells Joe he needs to break some legs, Joe will ask, “How many?” and then start breaking legs. Joe faithfully carries out every order Sam issues; he is disposed to do almost anything he is told to do. Unfortunately, it turns out Joe’s beliefs are mistaken: Sam doesn’t always or even frequently want what’s best for his community, Sam is frequently incompetent at determining what’s best, and Sam rarely makes reasonable or justifiable decisions. When Sam orders Joe to break legs, it’s not a special instance where leg-breaking is called for. Rather, Sam’s decisions are incompetent or malicious.

Is Joe a hero? On one hand, he seems to have good intentions–he genuinely wants to help. On the other hand, Joe seems to suffer from the very problem that brought Anakin Skywalker to the Dark Side: he is willing to do close to whatever it takes to achieve his goals. What’s most problematic about Joe, though, is that he relinquishes his moral responsibility. He does what Sam tells him to do, even when Sam tells him to do something wrong. When Joe goes around breaking legs, Joe might think he’s justified in doing so, but his belief is both false and unjustified.

One might think that Joe is excused because he made a promise to follow Sam’s commands. But this is a morally problematic promise. Suppose I promise to do whatever Matt Zwolinski tells me to do. Now suppose Matt orders me to murder the people at Crooked Timber, whom he sincerely believes are a threat to peace and world civilization. Here, I would have no obligation to murder the Crooks–promises to perform wrongful actions are invalid–and I would be blameworthy for following Matt’s orders.

Today is Veteran’s Day, yet another day when Americans are supposed to thank soldiers for their service. But are (some, most, all?) soldiers heroes? This depends on the facts. A hero–as we use the term in typical English discourse–is someone who voluntarily engages in rightful service to others, even though that service puts him at risk of harm, and who does so out of benevolence rather than a desire for personal gain. So, to assess whether soldiers are heroes, we’d need to know 1) what their motives are, 2) the degree to which they were at risk of harm, 3) whether they were rightfully serving others. The qualifier “rightfully” is important. After all, Nazi soldiers and Gulag guards served others, but they don’t serve the right ends, and they didn’t conduct their service in a morally permissible way. Superman is a hero not simply because he puts himself at risk on behalf of others, but also because he serves the right ends the right way.

(A harder case: What do we say about someone who justifiedly but mistakenly believes he is serving the right ends of the community? Suppose Batman justifiedly thinks that blowing up the Jokerbot will save Gotham City, but it turns out the Joker has attached a nuclear bomb to the bot, set to destroy Gotham if the bot is destroyed. In that case, when Batman destroys the bot, he makes things worse, not better, but because he was–we are stipulating–epistemically justified in believing that destroying the Jokerbot would save Gotham, he’s at least not blameworthy for his actions. Is he a hero?)

Whether you think the typical American soldier is a hero or not will depend a great deal on your view of American foreign policy. Some American wars are beyond the pale; no reasonable person could believe them to be justified: e.g., the various wars fought to exterminate and uproot Native Americans, the Mexican-American War, and the Spanish-American war. What about other wars and military incursions? I’ll lay my cards on the table and say that I think hardly any US military actions have been justified according to the correct theory of just war. I didn’t think the invasion of Iraq was justified, and so far, it’s been a disaster. While the Taliban was of course an illegitimate regime, invading Afghanistan seemed like a terrible idea, and so far, it has been. It’s far from clear that US military actions over the past 15 years have done anything to promote or protect Americans’ freedom, though it is clear that these actions have wrought death, suffering, and destruction upon many innocent foreigners. The US has spent the past 50 years imposing embargoes upon, bullying, and murdering civilians in the Middle East. As John Mueller has documented, the economic sanctions the US imposed on Iraq in the 1990s caused hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians to die. Osama bin Laden justified the 9/11 attacks in part as a response to these deadly sanctions.

If you think these endeavors have been justified, I haven’t given you any compelling argument to the contrary. I could write a 30,000 word post arguing that they were not, but frankly I’m not planning to do that here.That said, the burden of proof lies upon you, not me. The burden lies upon those that think U.S. military actions have been justified. After all, by default, we presume such violence is wrongful. This presumption can be overcome, but it is difficult to do so.

So, with that, to almost all current soldiers and almost all past soldiers, no thank you for service. You are putting my freedom and my children’s well-being in danger. You are at best putting out the fires past administrations caused when they played with matches. Every time you bomb, rape, and abuse, you’re helping to breed a new generation of terrorists who have every reason to despise America. I don’t consider most of you to be heroes, though maybe a few of you are. Rather, many of you are neither helpful nor harmful, and a great many of you are makings worse, not better. You are my enemies, not my heroes.

Today, don’t thank a soldier, unless you know of one of the rare soldiers who is a genuine hero. Thank your local auto mechanic or your neighborhood tailor. These individuals not only do more good for the country than the average soldier; an individual tailor might well do more good for the country, on net, than all the soldiers combined.

UPDATE: Jeff Sylvester in the comments has a good point. We might need some sort of military force for protection; we’d be at risk without one. Some soldiers genuinely want to serve only in a defensive capacity, but the problem is that, given the current military, they cannot do so; they will be made to fight wars. So, they have a dilemma–they can do nothing or they can do too much. (Compare this to a person who wants to become a jail guard because he wants to protect people from murderers, but, because the system is corrupt, will then be made to imprison drug users who should not be in jail.) Sylvester has a point. I can’t see how nearly unconditional service to American bullying is the right resolution, but perhaps the real heroes are people who find just the right way to serve within the corrupted system.