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Iraq is not in the rear view mirror just yet—not with 50,ooo American troops still in theatre. Still, it’s pretty clear that something significant has happened in the past few days. We won’t know exactly what it is for years, maybe even decades, but whatever it is, it has happened. So let us take a few minutes to think about what we as a country have sacrificed, what we have gained, what we have lost, and what we have learned in Iraq.

First, let us take a moment to remember the many soldiers and Marines, and sailors and airmen, who died there. Any fair reckoning of their sacrifices must take into account that they were volunteers in the military service, and that they accepted hardship and risk as part of their way of life. They died warriors’ deaths, and they deserve warriors’ honor for who they were and what they did. They ought not to be reduced to statistics, or treated as victims, or remembered as the boys or teenagers they were before they went over to Iraq, no matter how much we might be tempted to do so in the interests of sentimentality. These men and women worked to earn the title of “soldier,” or “sailor,” or “airman,” or “Marine,” and it would be wrong to deprive them of that title and thereby deprive them of the dignity and honor they deliberately sought out. It would also be wrong to forget them. It would be nice if the civilians who sent them to Iraq would remember them and their sacrifices next Memorial Day instead of just heading off to enjoy the three-day weekend. But this is not the way that most Americans observe Memorial Day, and recognizing this, I will simply say that, come next Memorial Day, I had better not hear a single damn civilian complaining about the price of gas as he or she heads to the beach. Because believe me, buster, you have no idea about the price of gas.

Second, I will observe that if we have learned anything from our experience in Iraq, it’s that the words “slam dunk” and “cakewalk” do not properly belong in the American military vocabulary, no matter how many J-DAMS and Strike