Thanks To Those Who Serve Us All

From all of us at the Superfly Circus, our thoughts are with those of deployed to the various sandboxes of the world, sitting in scorching heat, catching incoming mortar fire while you're just trying to make it home. Our thoughts are with those at Ramstein Air Base, Walter Reed, and other military hospitals where you may be recovering, or if you're taking care of America's finest. We're thinking of you if you're just sitting at a desk in a Quatermaster's office, making sure that the supply of tobacco, whiskey, and ammunition makes it to where it needs to go to keep our men and women supplied. We're with you in spirit if you're standing guard at the South Korean DMZ, sleeves rolled up in 10 degree weather, proving you're tougher than those sons of bitches across the no-man's land.

The Superfly Circus supports each and every last one of you. While we may not always like your orders, and we know you may not either, the fact is that having the courage and honor to do what you do every day, on my behalf, on behalf of my wife and little girls; the sacrifices you make, the lives put on hold, all of it...we're damned proud of every last one of you.

Someday, maybe, the world will be at peace and we won't need Minuteman missiles, F-22 Raptors, the Charles Vinson, A-10s, and M-4 Carbines. Until that day, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts because without you manning those weapons, without the steel resolve required to stand firm when every instinct in every facet of your soul tells you to run like hell and get the fuck out of there, YOU are the difference between me being able to live a free man and living under the tyranny of a dictatorial regime that would do us harm. YOU are the reason our cities aren't being devastated by the madness of power-hungry megalomaniacs and idealogical zealots.

So we thank you.

And we also thank the families of the folks who serve our country with honor and distinction. The fathers who raised their children to love freedom, and to have the courage to send them off to dangerous jobs in dangerous places. To the wives and husbands who cry alone at night that they may never see their loved one again. To the children who go without a father or mother because their parent is a true American patriot. To those of you, we say thanks.

And even though it's an American holiday, we say thanks to our allies' troops that, in many cases, don't even have a dog in the hunt, so to speak. Folks that have no business being embroiled in conflicts that their countries sent them to primarily to appease American politicians. To you, your families, and to your nations, we thank you for what you do for us. While political alliances come and go, individual alliances are not so easily forgotten. To the British, the Poles, the Japanese, the Canadians, and all others who serve your countries and fight alongside Americans, you will not be forgotten. And we thank you.

Thank you all for what you do. Thank you for making the world less chaotic so that free societies can exist, and individuals are free to seek out their own, personal brand of happiness. Without the sentries at the gate, without good men and women who knowingly choose to stand watch against the oppression of hate and madness, we would surely perish.  We'll always be in your debt, and we'll always owe you more than we can ever repay. The best we can offer is a true, heartfelt thanks, and knowing that we honor you not just as soldiers, seamen, airmen, marines, and coasties, but as individuals who are truly the finest representatives of what freedom means: The choice to make a difference in the world, no matter the personal cost.

Thank you.