“Thank you for your service.”
We are all familiar with this expression and may use it ourselves when we learn that someone was in the military. I can think of occasions in my life when it seemed like the right thing to say, and the examples in public life are countless.
Almost certainly, the ever-present risk of losing one’s life in the course of fulfilling one’s responsibilities in the profession is what lies behind the expression of gratitude. It also may involve a recognition of the moral and emotional price paid by those who take lives in the name of our country.
I have personally never heard the saying applied to teachers, nurses, physical therapists, home health attendants or others whose service does not involve taking or risking of life.
This saying seems to have grown along with the development of a volunteer, as opposed to conscript, military since the end of the Draft in 1973. No longer are all of us, and our children, required by law to be in a situation of losing or taking life.
Even so, misunderstandings regarding military service may occur and that is why I am offering a slight modification, an alternative which would be both more accurate, namely:
“Thank you for your obedience.”
The distinguishing characteristic of service in any military organization is obedience to orders handed down through the chain-of-command. In past decades of US history, we have thanked our veterans for their obedience to orders in such conflicts as Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Grenada, Venezuela, Panama etc. even when we disagreed with the justifications offered by civilian leaders for such wars. The fact that a limited number of men and women swore an oath, put on a uniform and risked their lives in these wars is what we honored.
When US military personnel were ordered to send a Tomahawk missile smashing down onto a girls school in Minab, Iran on February 28, no one would expect them to tell their commander to think twice or to check the coordinates more closely. When Air Force or Navy personnel were ordered by Trump to blow fishing boats out of the Caribbean, killing over a hundred people, we hardly expected them to ask for evidence that the boats were legitimate targets.
Even in matters of policy, high-ranking military personnel are expected to obey without public questioning of the orders from civilian leadership. Joint Chiefs Chairman Caine reputedly warned against Trump’s attack on Iran, but he has not expressed his reservations in public. Army Chief of Staff Randy George has obediently accepted dismissal and early retirement from Pete Hegseth. In his case, the policy difference is said to be that General George did not support Hegseth’s vision of an all-white officer corps.
According to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, obedience has its limits, as was pointed out by Senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly and their veteran/colleagues in a well-publicized video earlier this year. They reminded serving military of the requirement under the Code to disobey illegal orders. This was clearly a wise and necessary statement, as evidenced by the furious and futile response of the Trump regime.
However, according to Google, the only recorded example of US troops refusing an illegal order was in 1968 at My Lai, Viet Nam when a few soldiers refused to obey orders to massacre innocent villagers.
Obedience is the norm and in 2026 that means obedience to the homicidal whims of one old man. This is why I respectfully suggest this new phrase with which to recognize and sympathize with those now serving in his undeclared and unauthorized wars against Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and perhaps Cuba, Canada, Greenland...
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