Much of what I carried with me was summed up in a handwritten card that lay on my Pentagon desk these past few years, the desk where I signed deployment orders sending troops overseas. It read, “Will this commitment contribute sufficiently to the well-being of the American people to justify putting our troops in a position to die?” I would like to think that, thanks to the lessons I was taught, the answer to the Gold Star families of those we lost is “yes,” despite the everlasting pain those families carry with them.
