Comment of the Day...

My son has won an appointment to the US Air Force Academy, class of 2011, from the nomination of our fine junior senator. When my son went to be interviewed at the senator's office, the staffer told the aspiring cadets and their families about her own father's history as a World War II pilot. She asked us, "Do you know what the business of the military is?" I smiled and mouthed the reply as she spoke it: "To break things and kill people." I am a retired Air Force officer, so I already knew.

It's a seemingly flip and superficial answer but it holds sober truth and dread honor at its core.

As was the staffer's intent, it got the attention of the other parents, many for perhaps the first time as they contemplated what it really means for one's child to take up the profession of arms. Then in the cathedral quiet that had suddenly descended upon the room she added in a measured and poignant cadence, "and it may well be the duty of some of those of you who take on these grave responsibilities and the commissioning oath to defend this nation and its people, to one day show your men how an officer dies."

It was a matchless, powerful moment, for it was based on a profound truth, a truth I had seen reflected in the lives of some of the finest men I have ever had the honor of knowing, veterans of conflicts from Vietnam to Belgium, from Korea to Afghanistan, ordinary men burnished to high honor by extraordinary sacrifice among a band of brothers in the battle well fought. - Kevin P, in a comment on Pajamas Media