By Debbie Schlussel

Marine Staff Sgt. Mark Graunke, Jr., Iraq War Vet, Hugs Pearl Harbor Survivor/WWII Vet Houston James (Graunke Lost a Leg, Hand, and Eye Defusing a Bomb in Iraq)

It’s something I say every year on Veterans Day. And Memorial Day, too. The service and sacrifices of those brave men who served on the battlefield and in other capacities in service to our country should be remembered every single day and not just on these two holidays. Without them (and G-d), we wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t have a country, and we certainly wouldn’t be free.

But their lives and limbs should be sacrificed sparingly . . . for things that matter, for wars that matter. Let’s bring those who are still serving America in Afghanistan and Iraq (yes, we are back) and bring them home safely so that they, too, can be remembered on Veterans Day and not Memorial Day. Sadly, because they’ve been sent to a losing war in Iraq to hand over a Muslim country from one sect of Muslims who hate us to another group of Muslims who hate us and created a vacuum, we are now sending some of our soldiers back to that hellhole to risk it all again to rescue others from ISIS. And we still have men on the ground steadily being picked off by the Taliban and its sympathizers in Afghanistan. Bring them home.

And make their service and sacrifice count for something more. Why on earth did they go over there to lose limbs, minds, and lives . . . if we are now letting in–and have let in–thousands of Muslims who are and will continue to transform our country to an Islamic state through immigration and birth rate and take away our freedoms little by little, through their intolerance and arrogance? Didn’t our soldiers fight terrorists and extremists over there so we wouldn’t have to fight them on U.S. soil? Instead, Bush and Obama more than doubled the Islamic population to America and made fighting them over there an effort that was completely in vain. And, yet, we are still there, anyway, as we continue to open the doors wide to them on our shores a la Europe.

Also, as we celebrate Veterans Day and remember the service and sacrifices of those who served and survived, let’s remember those who survived but came home with arms and legs missing, with eyes gone and whole faces and body parts disfigured, making life difficult for them forever. And those who have all the body parts but their heads and minds are now messed up from explosions and trauma. Again, why did they sacrifice part of themselves over there, when we have imported thousands of the enemy here to slowly transform our country to “over there”?

Wounded American Marine Salutes President Reagan’s Casket

On this Veterans Day, I remember those who served in World War II, a war which America actually had the guts to fight and where there was CLEAR good and evil. We were the good guys, no matter what Brad Pitt and Hollywood told me in “Fury” (read my review). We didn’t hand out candy or build roads while bombs showered our military men and women who trained for war, not to become de facto civil servants for enemies who hate us. And we didn’t welcome hundreds of thousands of impossible-to-vet Nazis to our shores to take over (just a few of them to help with our space program–and that was too many). After the Japanese bombed us at Pearl Harbor, did we welcome hundreds of thousands of unvetted Japanese to come live her and change the country from within? Hell no. We didn’t let the German American Bund take over. But we are letting Islam and Muslims do that. So why did we go to war over there?

On this Veterans Day as on every other before it, I will visit the graves of my two favorite vets, my late father, who served as a U.S. Army Captain during Vietnam, and my great-uncle Maurice J. Schlussel, MD, who became the U.S. Army’s chief medical officer for the South Pacific after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. My dad always thought that going into Iraq was a mistake and a no-win situation that would end up in Middle East instability on a great level. Bingo. He didn’t know the name ISIS–that developed after he died. But he said the war and the ultimate de-Ba’athification of the Iraqi government would enrage Sunnis and they would fight back. Father knows best. That’s exactly how ISIS was created. The Sunnis created Al-Qaeda in Iraq which became ISIS. And there you have it. ISIS all over the Middle East and Africa, bombing planes, taking over countries (Libya, Iraq, Syria, with a presence in the Egyptian Sinai and other African countries, as well as cells and sympathizers in Europe and the U.S.) If we aren’t willing to protect those things on U.S. soil, and merely open the floodgates repeatedly to invaders, we have no business sending our military to make sacrifices anywhere else in the world.

My Dad’s Army Uniform From During Vietnam

Today, as on each of the past six Veterans Days for which he has been in office, as you watch the President at various Veterans Day ceremonies, giving speeches and regurgitating trite plaudits to our military that he does not mean, know that the ghosts of Arlington National Cemetery cry out over his transgressions, his deliberate missteps that attempt to reverse what our brave men fought and died for, with the whole world laughing at and disrespecting America, once a strong bastion of the free and the brave. Now, it is a weak, borderless, Islamo-pandering place with a severely shrunken military, thanks to cooperation of Republicans with that Obama move. Neither Paul Ryan nor Mitch McConman will do anything to change the status quo. They are allies of Obama, not the American people who put them in power and wanted a loyal opposition. Instead, we got a partnership of loyal pander-sition.

Pray for our troops that are still serving both overseas and on U.S. soil. Appreciate their service and pray for their well-being and an emergent homecoming for them. Bring all of them home alive in one peace, so that they will be veterans next Veterans Day and not the mourned next Memorial Day.

To those who served and survived, including my cousin Damian Schlussel, Happy Veterans Day to you and thank you for your service. Thank you for risking your life and limb so that I and the rest of us can live our lives freely. So that I can say what I want here on this website and others can read it without fear of punishment. Your risks and service mean the world to me.

To most of us.

Thanks, Dad, and thanks, Uncle Maurice.

And thanks to all of you who kept us alive and safe and continue to do so on U.S. shores in whatever capacity in which you served.

If you’ve ever worn the American military uniform in service to America, G-d Bless You (unless, of course, you spent your time in uniform appeasing the enemy).

Without you, our brave American veterans, who served knowing you might be called on to make the ultimate sacrifice, we wouldn’t be here living free.

Jewish-American Soldiers Pray at Goebbels’ House in Germany (See My Other Cool, Inspiring Photos of Jewish Soldiers Praying at Normandy, Etc.) . . .

Pfc. Abraham Mirmelstein (left) of Newport News, VA holds the Torah scroll as Capt Manual M. Poliakoff (center) and Corp. Martin Willien, cantor, both of Baltimore conduct Jewish prayer services at Schloss Rheydt, the castle home of Dr. Josef Paul Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister, in Munchen Gladbach, Germany. The services, held in memory of soldiers of the Jewish faith who died in the drive to the Rhine, were the first held east of the Roer River in Germany. The photo was taken by the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1945 or ’46.