In 2008, before he became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen said, “I am convinced that America’s great sea of good will can be, in fact, a rising tide … a tide that could lift every veteran and every family of our wounded and fallen.”

All but 9,800 of the 2.6 million troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan will be home by the end of the year. Unlike the vets of some generations before, they will be celebrated and thanked — and that is exactly as it should be.