Like the boy soldier salute, the sentimentalization of the military is juvenile. Television depictions of modern technological warfare, for example, make it seem as if a military campaign were but a superb game, an occasional Super Bowl that America is bound to win - and with almost no human losses. ("We'll keep our fighting men and women out of harm's way" - a senseless phrase that emerged during the Clinton years.)
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The exaggerated vesting of the president with his supreme role as commander in chief is a new element in American history.