My father was a Marine, and it was such an important and dear thing to him. All his life, the fact that he'd served in the United States Marine Corps was very close to his heart. They were the happiest years of his young life, and he would proudly recount them in every detail. When I was a boy, I was convinced that to serve ones country in the military was to approach immortality. I've always had a special, abiding respect reserved only for those who serve in our military, even in my most leftist hour.

Having listened to some of my Dad's VFW buddies talk about what they saw in Normandy in 1944 or Dong Ha 24 years later, made me appreciate the profundity of the acceptance of possible death that our servicemembers walk around with. There's a finite number of us who know what that feels like, and those people have earned our respect.

After 9/11, I marveled as the ranks of my nation's military swelled with young people who were not just hurt and infuriated over what 19 Islamic fiends did to us that day, but were also willing to risk life and limb to do something about it. Since then, I have been inspired and humbled by their resolve and maturity, by their level of professionalism and self-possessed surety, which I certainly didn't have at that age. I look at their faces and I see kids. But when I hear their steady, measured voices describing the awesome job they are charged with doing—a job that that few of us would be willing to contemplate, let alone take up ourselves—I realize that I am listening to extraordinary men and women who can look impossibility in the eye and coolly flatten it as they move on to the next task at hand.

Now more than ever our nation's finest should be shown that they are appreciated. They should be made to feel that they are needed, because they are. To die a martyr in an attack on America is every crazed jihadi's fondest wish, and our military is granting that wish every day overseas so that it doesn't have to happen here. Anyone who doesn't believe that Allah's soldiers would love to be doing what they do in Iraq and Afghanistan in the streets of Manhattan or Washington does not understand the very real threat of jihad. Our guys in Iraq who watch their friends die as some nutcase blows himself into the next world for his angry God—they understand the gravity of jihad's menace. They are on the frontline of a war against people who have nursed a Crusades grudge for 900 years and who fight according to the barbaric principles of an unreformed medieval religion. They kill in Fallujah and Kabul the way they killed in Manhattan four short years ago, and the way they did when they took Granada, Constantinople, and Kosovo—with ruthless disregard for the value of human life, and with maniacal religious ecstasy. Interestingly, many in the Western media, academia, and on the left side of the political spectrum are more concerned about how we treat their religious book or if we offend their pride (à la Abu Ghraib panties head) than they are about the startling savagery with which the mujahideen operate in God's name—the savagery which America's sons and daughters must face and somehow define in this war.

I know what you guys face. I don't know how it must feel to have to confront and process it, but I have spent a fair amount of time over the last few years learning about the 1,400 year-old madness that Islamofascists see as normal. I know your heart breaks when you see an Iraqi kid dying with all his limbs blown off as collateral damage of the shahid's fiery moment of homicidal glory. I know that you must be sickened every time you hear about Iraqi guardsmen, noncombatant men and women, truck drivers, cops—Americans—getting their heads sawed off as per Allah's divine decree. I know that watching your friends maimed and murdered by faceless cowards who only live to destroy what is right and just is probably frustrating beyond words. I can't understand what it must be like to face these things. I know that these things have been happening for a very long time, though, and that our American troops along with our MNF friends understand quite well the evil we are facing in this war. Iraq and Afghanistan are just two fronts—jihad is global and timeless. While we're here at home, 9/11 quietly settling back amongst other memories from our day-to-day life, many of our brave men and women see firsthand, every single day, what 9/11 was about.

I don't know how to properly thank you guys and gals. I write about how proud I am of you whenever I can, and I hope that my words of heartfelt gratitude reach a few of you. A few months ago I was out hiking with my dogs and I ran into a soldier on leave from Iraq. He was out with his lovely wife and beautiful baby. I thanked him and told him that we all sleep safely at night because of what he and his buddies do for us. It was all I could offer this young man who would soon leave his family behind to pick up his M16 and confront the murderous "insurgents" in their kaffiyeh covered faces and their screams of Allahu akbar!—the people who hate America, Western civilization, and democracy so much that they will gladly die in their efforts to destroy any part of it. I thanked him and shook his hand and I hope he understood how earnestly I meant it.

No matter what brings you to the armed services—patriotism, money for college, training, personal improvement, all of these things... whatever—you've made a choice that the vast majority of us don't ever find ourselves considering: the choice to put your life on the line in defense of the United States of America if you get that call, as so many have before you. That takes a grandness, a deep intimateness with oneself that most never know. I understand that once you guys are in a live fire zone, it's you and your brothers, and nothing else. There aren't any politics, or bravado, or abstract notions of patriotic zeal. It's about you surviving so that you can go home to your family, and making sure that the same goes for your brothers who are looking out for you too. I know that you guys walk away from this insanity changed men—wiser, old before your time in heart and mind, and as close to each other as any brothers could be. I hope that in your few moments of quiet, you guys can occasionally reflect upon the fact that people like me (and there are plenty of us) back here at home think about you all the time with pride, gratitude, and affection. We pray for you, think about you, and we want you to come home when your job is done because you are this great nation's greatest asset. We appreciate the sacrifices you make, the hours of boredom or the eternal moments of heated battle you withstand, the days and months spent worlds away from those you love, the sand, heat, cold, everything—all of it. We appreciate that you do it so we don't have to.

Whether you're in the reserves, at a military academy, in basic training, deployed, waiting to see if you'll get called up, no matter what you're doing anywhere in our military—I don't think we thank you enough. Too much still wouldn't be enough. We are so fortunate to enjoy the freedoms, opportunities, and hope of America, and we are doubly fortunate to have the world's finest defending us from the wicked men in this world who would destroy us and our hard-won way of life.

Thank you all.

Copyright ©2005 Patrick D. O'Brien: may not be copied, published, or otherwise used (except for quotes) without express permission of author. Originally posted at Clarity & Resolve.