And so we squandered them, threw them into one conflict after another. Nearly two decades after 9/11, it was recorded that American personnel were committed to at least seven major combat zones around the globe. Seven! Did any of us know that at the time? Would many of us have cared? When President Donald Trump told a grieving war widow that her husband “knew what he was getting into,” wasn’t he just voicing what we all felt?

It’s easy to see now how attractive privatization looked by the late 2020s. Recruitment was down. Suicide was up. It was even revealed that, thanks to our horrendous education and nutrition standards, 71 percent of all young Americans were unfit for military service. So why not get rid of that service altogether?

We’d already begun privatizing as early as the 1980s when President Reagan Ronald announced, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” And that philosophy only gained traction in the 1990s when President Bill Clinton declared, “The era of big government is over.”

By nationalizing narcissism, should we have been surprised that all our major turn-of-the-century breakthroughs had absolutely nothing to do with current events? Some geriatric Gen X’rs like me still remember that during the oil wars of the early 2000s, when America, the world, was screaming for an alternative to petroleum, all we got was Steve Jobs crowing about watching “The Office” on our phones.

In our rush to cut taxes and maximize profits, it seems inevitable, now, that after privatizing the Departments of Education, Agriculture and Corrections, the behemoth of Defense was next. This was especially clear after President Miller’s “Two Birds” argument. After all, no more soldiers meant no more veterans, which meant no more Department of Veterans Affairs. It all sounded so attractive, from both a financial and emotional point of view. Instead of feeling responsible for veterans, we could now outsource our guilt. We could finally have it all.

That was the feeling barely a quarter-century ago. No more obligation, no more providing for “the common defense.” Now someone else could do all the suffering to keep us happy and safe, and all we had to do was “pray,” “hug our children” and “participate in the economy.” And we did. We shrunk our national duty down to the size of a bumper sticker reading, “I support our troops” or “Freedom isn’t Free.”

And look where it got us.

And what can we do now?

It seems almost un-American to say this, but there simply is no quick fix. There are short-term patches, no doubt, like giving our mercenaries what they want. We don’t have a choice. If we don’t pay our sell-sword’s ransom, they may do a lot worse than simply drop those swords; they may turn them on us.