American soldier Person of the Year

THE American soldier, who bears the duty of “living with and dying for a country’s most fateful decisions,” has been named as Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

The magazine’s editors chose the nameless soldier to represent the 1.4 million men and women who make up the US military, which led the invasion of Iraq nine months ago and a week ago captured deposed leader Saddam Hussein.

About 130,000 US soldiers remain in Iraq, with others serving in Afghanistan, South Korea, Japan, Germany and elsewhere.

Soldiers were singled out as the top newsmakers of the year because “the very messy aftermath of the war made it clear that the mission had changed, that the mission had not been completed and that this would be a story that would be with us for months, if not years, to come,” Time managing editor Jim Kelly said.

The selection echoes 1950, the year the Korean War began, when editors picked the American GI for the cover, writing that “it was not a role the American had sought, either as an individual or as a nation. The US fighting-man was not civilisation’s crusader, but destiny’s draftee.”

The 2003 Person of the Year package focuses on a 12-person artillery survey unit stationed in Iraq to tell the story of the American soldier. Two Time journalists embedded with the platoon were injured in a grenade attack this month.

Three soldiers with the unit are shown on the cover.

The magazine glorifies soldiers but not the Bush administration for putting them in Iraq, calling troops “the bright sharp instrument of a blunt policy.”