Vet News: Time Names 'American Soldier' As Person Of The Year

For the second time since it started conferring the honor in 1927, Time magazine has selected the American Soldier as its Person of the Year.

Time announced its 2003 choice Dec. 21. The American Soldier was first selected as Time’s Person of the Year during the Korean War in 1950.

"Look at the covers (of Time) for the past year and you will see that one-third of them have to do with the war in Iraq," said Mark Thompson, Time’s Pentagon correspondent. "Our editors looked at the key figures of the war – Saddam, Bush, Rumsfeld – and decided they didn’t quite fit. The American Soldier did."

Time traditionally selects the person or persons that have been centrally involved in the major history-making issues of the year for the honor, Thompson said. Not all past winners were picked for being good people – Adolf Hilter, 1938; Josef Stalin, 1939 and 1949; and Ayatollah Khomeini, 1979, for example.

The editorial article that justifies Time’s selection, Dec. 29, 2003 – Jan. 5, 2004 issue, praises Soldiers.

"For uncommon skills and service, for the choices each one of them has made and the ones still ahead, for the challenge of defending not only our freedoms but those barely stirring half a world away, the American Soldier is Time’s Person of the Year," stated the article.

While praising Soldiers, the editorial makes a break of Soldiers’ actions with those of the administration. It questions the international policy decisions of its 2000 Person of the Year, President George W. Bush.

"The unstated promise is that soldiers are sent to war only as a last resort, to defend their country from harm," the editorial asserted. "But while the threat posed by Saddam was chief among the stated justifications, George W. Bush’s war was always about more than the weapons that have yet to be found."

The Person of the Year issue contains a supporting article, "Portrait of a Platoon," written by Time correspondents Romesh Ratnesar and Michael Weisskopf who followed the survey platoon of 2/3rd Field Artillery Battalion, 1st Armored Division, for several weeks recently. That story includes details of almost daily patrols through the streets of Baghdad, the improvised explosive device ambush that killed the platoon leader and a grenade attack that injured both reporters and two Soldiers. Weisskopf lost a hand Dec. 10 while trying to get rid of the grenade that was thrown in the High Mobility, Multi-Purpose Vehicle he was riding.

Another supporting article, "Families of Soldiers," tells the survey platoon’s stories through loved ones’ eyes – some supportive of Operation Iraqi Freedom; some not.

Time rounds out it 2003 Person of the Year issue with a pro and con discussion of reinstating the draft and personality features of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

SOURCE: VNIS