Happy Veterans’ Day

Sure, I could link to a sappy YouTube tribute, but my weakness for empirical data gets the best of me in my weaker moments, so I decided to link to the latest Brookings Iraq Index instead. If you’re like me, you also look forward to the day when Iraqis are banning GI’s from their booking clubs, protesting the SOFA, and bitching about the high price the Americans are charging for the biofuels that began to edge gasoline aside in 2015 and transformed Saudi Arabia into a blighted, dusty place that survives by sending its daughters off to work as maids in the Philippines.

Then it occurred to me that there’s no rule against following a batch of empirical data with a nice, sappy video:

Oh beautiful, for heroes proved through liberating strife
Who more than selves their country loved,
And mercy more than life

With my deepest appreciation to my fellow vets for an abundance of peace and prosperity we’re all free to take for granted.

Update: At least most of us.