Via Bill:

Gott. Damned. Straight.

Update! Very much related:

Those who have battled the enemy up close have always been more heavily invested in the cause. What’s different is that in past wars, the nation was tied to its soldiers and had a familial barometer. Today most Americans have never met a Gold Star family, let alone shaken the hand of a fallen soldier. The military community is increasingly insulated even as the burden of global war swells. Within it there are those who drift in and out of the fight according to orders. But there is also a group that is distinctive–those who join the military to hunt the enemy for a living, and for the rest of us. Doug Zembiec was such a man.

When he first returned from Iraq, Zembiec relinquished command to his friend Maj. Ray Mendoza. Though they came from different backgrounds, like all of our warrior elite they shared an overwhelming martial calling. Doug was an all-American wrestler at Navy. Ray was the top heavyweight wrestler at Ohio State and an Olympic alternate. Their Marines used to joke that if the pair ever fought it would be like the movie “Clash of the Titans.”

A year later, on Nov. 14, 2005, Mendoza was leading his company in an attack near the Syrian border when he was struck down. He was the only man killed in his company. I received an email from a lieutenant in his battalion that read, “It was leadership from the front but it’s crushing.”

Zembiec, who had returned to Iraq for another tour of duty, wrote to Mendoza’s two young children. The note was upbeat, blunt and unapologetic. “Your father reminds us there are men willing to fight for people that they don’t even know,” he wrote. “Even now, as I write this letter in Iraq, I will honor him on the field of battle by slaying as many of our enemies as possible, and fight until our mission is accomplished.”

Men who carry rifles for a living do not seek reward outside the guild. The most cherished gift an infantryman receives is a nod from his peers. When Zembiec, “The Lion of Fallujah,” fell this May 11 while commanding a raid on insurgent forces in Baghdad, the loss was symbolic of all those men whom the rest of us aspired to be in combat: fearless guardians of our fellow soldiers and our nation. It’s not surprising then that more than 1,000 mourners–generals and enlisted men alike–attended Doug’s memorial service in Annapolis, Md. And when Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke of his courage at the Marine Corps Association annual dinner in Arlington, Va., he fought back tears.

It has become commonplace to assert that the nation’s most precious resource is our children. God knows the debt the nation owes the three little ones Doug and Ray left behind, and the hundreds of other shattered families. But during wartime our greatest asset may be our guardians. We should take solace that while we are off to a terrible start in the long war, having allowed the Iraqi battlefield to embitter and weaken the country, our nation produced men like Mendoza and Zembiec. And right now somewhere some other American walks their tracks.

Read every word — and ponder, with heartfelt gratitude, Reagan’s eternal question: where did we find such men?