In the COVID-19 pandemic, our heroes are healthcare professionals, essential workers, and scientists. On Memorial Day, though, it’s also important to remember our troops — especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

But our service members’ sacrifice is an abstraction when the average citizen has little idea where we are fighting and why. Our military’s broader missions don’t get much public attention, and our elected leaders struggle to describe them in easily digestible soundbites. Indeed, our complex war against transnational jihadists defies tidy abbreviation. The days of a discrete “war in Iraq” are gone. Our “war in Afghanistan” rages on, but is vastly reduced. The “war on terror” as a catch-all term is uselessly ill-defined.