Some poetry.

The thought is never far from the surface of my mind, that good men and women today fight on in countries far from the "Civilized" USA. Men and women who have lives, families, friends, and children. I'm no poet. I'll borrow from A.E. Housman.
Although misleadingly titled "An epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries" Housman wrote it as a tribute to the British Expeditionary Force, who in 1914 crossed over to Belgium to defend that nation against the onslaught of the Imperial German Army. Critics labelled them Mercenaries because they were men who volunteered to serve as soldiers in a time of peace. Apparently some then believed that fighting men should work for free. Housman thought differently, and I agree.
Here it is.

‘Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries’

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended, And saved the sum of things for pay.  -- A.E. Housman.

This poem, short though it is, reminds me that we too have men and women, professional soldiers, who are at this moment fighting on our behalf. Housman called them "Mercenaries" in the ironic sense, in as much as that's what German (and even some British) propaganda was calling the BEF. Our troops are not rank mercenaries. They are professionals, and yes, the cash their paychecks. But don't make the mistake of thinking they're doing it for the money. The vast majority are not. They do what it is they do out of a call to duty. To serve their nation. Not the flag, not the President -- flags change, Presidents come and go. The people. We need to remember this. Now, during a time when we're fighting wars on two continents, and in the future, when or if some future leader demands we send troops in somewhere. Because we need to also remember the words of
William Tecumseh Sherman:  "There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell." 

Perhaps more to the point : I confess, without shame, I am sick and tired of fighting—its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands and fathers ... tis only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated ... that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation. -- W.T. Sherman, 1865 

In closing : remember my friends that All war is horror, to be avoided whenever possible. George W. Bush forgot this lesson, if he ever indeed learned it. I ask you, my readers to never forget that.