Anybody who lived through the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of the 1960s and early 1970s recalls, with disgust, that many U.S. servicemen returning from the combat zone in southeast Asia were spat on, insulted, and sometimes even physically assaulted. Even worse were the agonies visited on them during their re-entry into civilian society by a government bureaucracy that too often couldn’t be bothered, in Lincoln’s words, “to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.” Along with so much else from that era of upheaval, the treatment of America’s Vietnam vets was beyond sad.
But that is the past. Elsewhere in today’s edition of The Washington Examiner, Kirt Schlichter, a veteran of Desert Storm and Operation Enduring Freedom, marvels at how different things are today: “All of us privileged to wear the uniform have felt it. You get hugs from grandmotherly types. You walk into stores and people shake your hand, saying ‘Thank you for your service.’ Little kids salute. You go to a restaurant and the waiter tells you someone has already taken care of the check. I recently stopped at a Starbucks and an older lady tried to buy my Frappucino. It happened again the next day.”
