WASHINGTON — Our family next week is going to watch the debut of the Washington Nationals’ new pitching sensation, Stephen Strasburg. However he does, there is one certainty: At the end of the third inning, a capacity crowd will rise and cheer the veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq in attendance.

Forty years ago, during Vietnam, veterans would have been booed.

As Americans commemorate Memorial Day, the culture has come a long way in celebrating the warriors, whatever one thinks of the war. Veterans returning from Vietnam were called baby killers and war criminals; Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, remembers feeling uneasy wearing his uniform in public.

Today, veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq are celebrated at sporting events, in Memorial Day parades and by politicians of all persuasions. The Department of Veterans Affairs’ budget has doubled in the past eight years, and is up almost a third from three years ago.

Top officials from the administration of President Barack Obama — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Admiral Mullen and Eric K. Shinseki, the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs — win plaudits from the veterans’ community. This wasn’t the case with several of their predecessors.