Dear Editor,
Every day, for the past several years, at least one chartered plane carrying U.S. soldiers heading home from active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan has touched down at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport.
And for every flight at the airport, volunteers in the “Welcome Home a Hero” programme have gathered to enthusiastically greet the returning soldiers.
In 2005, after spending almost a year in combat in Iraq, I was returning home for two weeks of rest and recuperation from active duty, and I was greeted by the volunteers after touching down at the airport.
I was given a hero’s welcome when I came through the airport in Atlanta, and it was an uplifting and emotional experience. It is an experience that I’ll never forget.
However, I don’t see myself as a hero, but someone who was doing his duty. For me, the real heroes are the soldiers who never returned home from war.
So when I read a few days ago that dancehall-turned reggae superstar Mark ‘Buju Banton’ Myrie was given a hero’s welcome at the Norman Manley International Airport in Jamaica after spending eight years imprisoned for drug trafficking in the United States, I was shocked, saddened and dumbfounded.
Editor, how can a convicted felon returning from prison be welcomed home like a hero? How do you call a convicted felon a hero? Is this not insulting, shameful and disgraceful to the combat veterans who gave of themselves until nothing was left?
I couldn’t fathom how a convicted drug trafficker who brought shame and disgrace to his country would be given a hero’s welcome like a soldier returning from combat. Indeed, I have to say that I am living in a strange world because any and everybody is a hero.
How do you juxtapose and justify a convicted felon returning home from serving time in prison and a combat veteran returning home from a war zone and both of them be seen as heroes?
Yours faithfully,
Anthony Pantlitz
