Eventually you realize that the entire organizational pressure to sacrifice is driven by nothing more than the unquenchable need for promotion and power of those working their way up towards the top. It's been a long fucking time since anything we were doing in the military actually mattered from the perspective of defending the Homeland. Sure, small operations here and there, but nothing that justifies the institutional insanity that everyone experienced while they were in. It's just a bunch of losers who desperately want to be generals. Even the "good dudes." Your personal and family life was meaningless to them because they didn't even care about their own. Flag officers. I still think there were some (rare) good O-6s.