Troops feel more pity than respect

Is pity such a bad thing? Considering that pity requires some kind of emotional connection, some would say it's better than not caring at all. With so many people in this country walking around without a single clue or care about the members of our military, at least those who show "pity" care.

The last thing I would do is pity any of them. I admire them. After meeting so many of our veterans, the last thought would be pity because no matter what they face when they come home, they would do it all over again. But after reading this report it makes me wonder if the word is being misused.

Pity
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pity originally means feeling for others, particularly feelings of sadness or sorrow, and was once used in a comparable sense to the more modern words "sympathy" and "empathy". Through insincere usage, it now has more unsympathetic connotations of feelings of superiority or condescension.[1]
The word "pity" comes from the Latin word "pietas".
The word is often used in the translations from Ancient Greek into English of Aristotle's Poetics and Rhetoric. Aristotle argued (Rhetoric 2.8) that before a person can feel pity for another human, the person must first have experienced suffering of a similar type, and the person must also be somewhat distanced or removed from the sufferer.[2] In Aristotle's Rhetoric he defines pity as follows: "Let pity, then, be a kind of pain in the case of an apparent destructive or painful harm of one not deserving to encounter it, which one might expect oneself, or one of one's own, to suffer, and this when it seems near".[2] Aristotle also pointed out that "people pity their acquaintances, provided that they are not exceedingly close in kinship; for concerning these they are disposed as they are concerning themselves....For what is terrible is different from what is pitiable, and is expulsive of pity".[2] Thus, from Aristotle's perspective,

in order to feel pity, a person must believe that the person who is suffering does not deserve their fate

.[2] Developing a traditional Greek view in his work on poetry, Aristotle also defines tragedy as a kind of imitative poetry that provokes pity and fear.[3]

Do they deserve to come home and have the rest of the country oblivious? Do they deserve to come home after their military service is over and not be able to find a job? Do they deserve to come home and discover that what came home with them is not being addressed properly? The list of what they don't deserve goes on and on.

You can pity their state of being but still admire what was inside of them that took them to where they are.

Troops feel more pity than respect
Stars and Stripes
Published: November 14, 2011

STARS AND STRIPES
Troops believe the general public treats them as victims rather than heroes when civilians try to honor men and women in uniform, the Washington Post reported on Monday.

Civilians tend to focus on troops' suffering instead of their accomplishments, the newspaper reported. As a result, the message troops come away with is the public feels sorry for them.

“We aren’t victims at all,” Brig. Gen. Sean B. MacFarland told the newspaper.“But it seems that the only way that some can be supportive is to cast us in the role of hapless souls.”
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