Veterans Day, Nov. 11, is when a grateful nation turns its attention to those who served in the armed forces. They amount to only a small proportion of our vast population, but that makes them a sort of elite. They are members of a special caste ready to give their lives defending their fellow Americans.
Although most of us have never put on our country’s uniform, let alone fired a shot, we have friends and relatives who have done one or both of those things. For me, it’s a grandfather, a father, and a son. The first fought the Germans in the air over France in 1918. The second fought the Japanese in Burma in 1945. The third, I thank God, has not — not yet, anyway — seen battle. But one resigns oneself to the likelihood with a mixture of pride and anxiety.
Those two emotions, pride and anxiety, point to why we honor veterans each November, commemorating the day the guns fells silent to end what was then called the Great War, now 101 years ago. We feel that those who volunteer to fight for their country are better than we are. It is indeed hard for people who have met military men and women not to conclude that they are among the finest people in society. And yet, ironically, we don’t want them to do what they have volunteered to do. That is, we do not want them to have to go to war, for we know that some don’t come back. It is a paradox we live with and should contemplate each year at this time.
To all our Washington Examiner readers who are veterans — we salute you!
We feature some veterans in the magazine this week. One is Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination. She’s in the Army reserves and was once the darling of her party. It loved having a congressional candidate who ticked the right boxes (woman, racial minority) but whose career would traditionally have been more associated by voters with a Republican. Now, however, she is the bette noir of the Democratic Party, kicking against the establishment and being denounced as a “Russian asset” by Hillary Clinton. In Your Land, we have a story about wartime love letters finally finding their way back to the family of the veteran and his sweetheart who wrote them.
Our cover story, “Rise and Fall,” illuminates the astonishing career of Rudy Giuliani, who was once a national hero and thought of as a probable president. Author Jonathan Tobin concludes that Rudy’s instinct to break the rules — the very strength that made him so effective as a prosecutor, as mayor of New York City, and as a leader after the 9/11 terrorist attacks — are the same ones now leading him astray and ruining his reputation.
It’s one of the great reads in another packed Washington Examiner magazine.
