Mr. Obama in his address offered an abbreviated history of the costly Iraqwar, but his focus was on the sacrifices of troops: Nearly 1.5 million men and women have served, more than 30, 000 have been wounded and nearly 4, 500 have died.
But there is one thing we know already: the Americans that went to war in Iraq served their country as well as any generation of fighting men and women in our remarkable history.
The Persian Gulf War and the Iraq and Afghan Wars a decade later are the first major wars in America's history that have been fought without broad-based conscription to mobilize all levels of American society.