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CDR Salamander of course has a fine post on the actions of four Americans in thwarting a slaughter on the French train over the weekend.

And of course, our own URR had to share his thoughts.

We are, in many ways, fortunate in this time and place. We have thousands upon thousands of young men, and some young women, who have lived multiple iterations of “that moment”. Perhaps that more than anything separates the combat Veterans from the rest of society. While the rest of the peaceful American public can only speculate what they would do, they see in the eyes of these young men the certainty of what they WOULD do, because they have done it so many times before. They have had their measure taken many times, and each time they have passed muster. Proven, to their comrades and themselves. The pure, raw courage of young men, gripping their rifles tightly, moving in to the beaten zone, or entering a fortified building, still leaves me in awe. They had so much more to lose than I did. I had lived 40 years of a life, most of them only about half of that, if not less. Yet, they risked it all, for their comrades and their country, and not least, for the Iraqi people whose suffering was so stark.

It is, not coincidentally, one of the things the peacenik liberal far-left resents most about our Veterans. While they themselves are the intellectual and moral successors to the draft-dodging cowards who filled the Progressive ranks in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, those they disparage KNOW themselves to be worthy. Worse, they know the peaceniks are not. And the peaceniks know that, too. And, in those dark places that one only peeks in before sleep, the peaceniks know it about themselves.

It is that demonstrated character among our magnificent young Veterans that gives me hope that the corroded, moribund, amoral Socialist-Communist ilk of Hillary and Obama will not hold sway over our futures.

What would I have done? I don’t know. We all wish to be the hero in our own narratives. But I also recognize that I’m a flawed person, and far removed from my days of training for war.