I empathize with all veterans for all the scars they carry, but I never have said “Thank you for your service” to anyone except WWII vets. Why? Because war is justifiable only if you are defending your homeland from invasion. NOTHING justifies invading another country by choice—ever. Bush and his neocon cronies are guilty of crimes against humanity just as Putin is. Johnson initially had the pretext, in Vietnam, of defending an allied regime against an invasion from the north, even though this pretext wore thin with the passage of time. But Bush—like Putin—clearly and blatantly violated the UN Charter by invading member nations in Afghanistan and Iraq. This was not “defending freedom” as gullible soldiers and their families were told. It was brutal aggression, pure and simple, just like Putin’s invasion. As the old saying goes, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”