A few months before the September 11 attacks, the Army launched a 150 million dollar marketing campaign to counteract the widespread belief that military service is dehumanizing and an affront to individuality. The old slogan, “Be All That You Can Be,” was replaced with the newer “Army of One.” An expensive shift of emphasis that moved recruitment efforts away from the idea that you become who you are meant to be by virtue of your participation in an institution greater than yourself, and towards the idea that the military becomes what it is meant to be by virtue of the excellence of it’s individual members.

You were a brilliant and courageous woman. How I admired you then. How little either of us understood.