I almost get frustrated with how much I LOVE the stuff that Steven Den Beste puts out.   Today, he has a pair of posts describing the romance Americans have with their servicemen and the Horrors of the wars they fight for us.

A couple excerpts from the first post:

...I'll try and keep this to the point: [the reader's recently deceased father] after giving twenty years as a world-class hotel manager, turning entire properties from liabilities into assets, he was let go without so much as a thank-you dinner or a handshake. Twenty years of service. He was a four-star general in the corporate world for two decades, and that was his reward.

...[When being buried at Arlington] The chaplain said, looking my stepmom in the eyes like this was the first time he'd ever said the words, that the men and women buried here had agreed to lay down their lives for their country and each other, and that THIS, not rank, or social status, or length in service, is what entitled them to be buried in America's most sacred ground.

Read them.   Both.   And then find a serviceman to thank.