I have often noted, with much sadness, that one of the most unfortunate things about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that only those who have served (and their families) have been asked to sacrifice anything at all.
On August 2nd, 2009, Sergeant First Class Alejandro "Alex" Granado III was killed by insurgents in Afghanistan. He was 42 years old. Alex was a friend of my mother's. She found out about his death just yesterday. She told me that after she found out Alex was going to Afghanistan, she began to watch the news regarding Operation Enduring Freedom much more closely. And that is only natural.
The large majority of us live in an America where the wars our country is fighting are events that are happening "over there" to "our brave men and women." They are merely afterthoughts in a country where we cut taxes during a war for the first time and watched an all-volunteer army suffer the load of wars with no clearly-defined mission and no end in sight.
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