On this Veteran’s Day, we begin, appropriately, with a report about the American military on the front lines. This story is neither as harrowing nor as heroic as many others. And yet, it is, in its own way, particularly grim. From the NYT: Deployed Inside the United States: “Sergeant Micek could almost see the bright orange and white roof of Whataburger, a fast-food utopia eight miles away but off limits under current Army rules. The desert tan flatbed trucks at the base are for hauling concertina wire, not food runs. Such is life on the latest front where American soldiers are deployed. The midterm elections are over, along with President Trump’s rafter-shaking rallies warning that an approaching migrant caravan of Central Americans amounts to a foreign ‘invasion’ that warrants deploying up to 15,000 active-duty military troops to the border states of Texas, Arizona and California. But the 5,600 American troops who rushed to the brown, dry scrub along the southwest border are still going through the motions of an elaborate mission that appeared to be set into action by a commander in chief determined to get his supporters to the polls, and a Pentagon leadership unable to convince him of its perils.”

+ And a nuanced reminder from a war widow: I was Pat Tillman’s wife, but I can’t speak for him. Neither can you.