Today's Troops

I had an opportunity to sit down with a retired officer today, and we took some time to talk about the current generation of American Soldiers (and, by extension, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, etc). We had a great time talking about our experiences and our frustrations. The gentleman was quite interested in the service being performed by our Soldiers today, and he expressed admiration and respect for the incredible work we're doing--we're performing twice the number of missions with half the Army that existed a mere 20 years ago.

As I walked away, I realized that, despite the omnipresent nay-sayers who always feel that the military is getting worse and worse, our troops are doing an incredible job. We have service members stepping up and performing jobs that used to be performed by someone with higher rank and more years of experience, and they're still performing marvelously, despite a relentless cycle of year-long deployments, followed by hectic year-long train-ups. In short, despite their flaws, they belong to a military we can all be proud of. In the grand scheme of things, that's all that matters...