"We're at war and will be for a long time"

Dean Barnett published an email from a recent Marine Corps OCS gradudate [Exceprt]:

This is some serious stuff. I remember when I was down at Quantico two summers ago for the first half of OCS. The second to last day I was down there--"Family Day," incidentally--was the 7/7 bombings. The staff pulled us over and told us the news and then said that's basically why they're so hard on us down there: we're at war and will be for a long time, and the mothers of recruits at MCRD and at Parris Island right now are going to be depending on us one day to get their sons and daughters home alive.

And this from an email I received earlier this week:

It's the Soldier, not the reporter,

Who has given us the freedom of the press.

It's the Soldier, not the poet,

Who has given us the freedom of speech.

It's the Soldier, not the politicians,

That ensures our right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

It's the Soldier who salutes the flag,

Who serves beneath the flag, And whose coffin is draped by the flag.

Not the weasels looking to bail on Afghanistan. Not the spineless politicians equivocating for terrorism. And not the media outlets too scared of their own shadow to call fundamentalist Islamic terror what it is. Not Britain's new Prime Minister, who can't bring himself to say "Muslim" and "Terror" in the same sentence.

It makes me angry to see so many terribly weak in the face of great danger; side with the enemy, and dissemble for shameful, baseless personal gain - while others stand up and don't complain.