Veterans Day Is A Powerful Reminder Of American Excellence

November 11th is Veterans Day, and it's a powerful reminder of America's greatness.

On this day, we set aside time to celebrate all the brave men and women who signed up to defend this beautiful country we all call home.

They signed up knowing damn well that they might be required to pay the ultimate price, and that alone is an act of bravery.

The United States has the greatest and most moral military in the history of the world, and there's no close second. We have the technology and military might to impose our power on the world at any place, at any time and in any fashion we want.

Veterans Day is a powerful reminder of American excellence. (Credit: Public Domain/United States Military/Wiki Commons/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Jaws_of_Death#/media/File:Into_the_Jaws_of_Death_23-0455M_edit.jpg)

Veterans Day Is a Sign of American Exceptionalism

Yet, that's not what the United States military is about. It's a force for good, and when the world cries out for help, young American men and women answer the call time and time again.

Whether it's the blood-soaked sands of Normandy on Omaha Beach as American men charged German machine guns or a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden, Americans have never been scared to answer the call.

When evil lashes out and rears its ugly head, there are American soldiers in camo with rifles ready to dispense justice with the pull of a trigger.

Today, I think about all the men who jumped behind enemy lines and hit the beaches on June 6, 1944, to liberate Europe from the grip of the Nazis.

They should have been home working on farms and in factories, starting families and living a great life of peace. Instead, they were sent to a foreign land carrying M1 rifles and Thompson submachines to save total strangers who didn't even speak the same language.

I think about all the Tier One operators who were tasked with hunting down the savages responsible for 9/11. The rumble was still burning in New York City as men whose names you will never know boarded aircraft on their way to the Middle East with one goal and one goal only:

Vengeance.

Trust me when I say the killing in the early days of the GWOT was unlike anything the world had seen in modern times. The fused power of operators on the ground with the aircraft above rained death on the enemy.

On Veterans Day, I think of all the men who fought in the Battle of Mogadishu. With a city turned loose against them, a small group of American forces mostly comprised of Delta Force operators and Army Rangers fought to the bloody end.

They refused to retreat and made trip after trip back into the city in order to secure multiple crash sites. It was the kind of bravery you simply do not see from other militaries around the globe.

Imagine facing impossible odds and almost certain death, and loading up and returning to the fight without any hesitation.

That's the kind of bravery that simply can't be described with words.

The ending of Black Hawk Down gets me every single time. Nobody asks to be a hero. It just sometimes happens.

Whether the jungles of Vietnam, the battlefields of Korea, the deserts of Iraq, the mountains of Afghanistan, the freezing forests of Bastogne or any other location American forces have gone, today is a day for everyone who wore the uniform and answered the call. We thank you for your service and the nation owes you a debt of gratitude. The United States of America has the greatest armed forces on the planet, and we'll never apologize for that fact. If you mess with this country, then the best people in the world will show up and kick your ass. It's that simple, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Let me know what you think at David.Hookstead@outkick.com.