U.S. Army Ranger Hall of Fame inductee Grant J. Hirabayashi, 87, on Oct. 18. A member of ‘Merrill’s Mauraders,’ a group of 3,000 soldiers who fought behind enemy lines in Burma during World War II, Hirabayashi fought for the U.S. while his parents were imprisoned in a Japanese American internment camp in California simply for being of Japanese descent.

Today is Veterans Day, with festivities presided over by our pseudo-veteran president, who ’served’ in the Vietnam War by getting a plum position in the Texas Air National Guard. TXANG was the preferred refuge for the privileged white Texan elite whose parents had the ‘pull’ to get their sons out of combat in Southeast Asia.

And of course, the story is even less flattering than that: Bush transferred to the Alabama Air National Guard but then seems to have disappeared altogether. Apparently, Bush was AWOL for most of his time in the National Guard, according to the website awolBush.com. And this is the ‘president’ who is presiding over Veterans Day celebrations…?

This is also the president who supports continuing the ban on service by openly lesbian or gay military personnel — “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue” — in the face of an effort to repeal the ban signed into law by Bill Clinton. And speaking of the Clintons, it’s interesting to note the timing of Hillary’s change of position on the issue. Hillary Clinton supported Don’t Ask Don’t Tell through her Senate re-election campaign in November 2006, only changed her position on the issue after she announced for president and after all the other Democrats in the race had come out in favor of repeal.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has become “Don’t ask if you’re shipping them off to Iraq” because the U.S. military is struggling to meet its recruiting goals in the face of a disastrous war that has killed 3,860 American service members and wounded 28,451 to date. But as both American and Iraqi casualties continue to mount, U.S. media coverage of the Iraq war has been declining steadily — along with public interest in the war and public support for it.

The contrast with the Second World War could hardly be greater. World War II engaged the entire nation, and no family was untouched by it, as noted in “The War,” the new Ken Burns documentary film. Some have called World War II ‘the Good War,’ but as one veteran in the film puts it, no war is good; some are simply necessary.

In contrast, the Iraq war was launched on false premises. The war in Iraq has now been going on longer than World War II but there is indeed “No End in Sight.” And there are in fact members of the LGBT community who are fighting and dying in Iraq today. But don’t expect Dubya or the mainstream media to focus on veterans who are lesbian, gay bisexual, or transgendered on this Veterans Day. The Servicemembers Defense League urges us to Honor Every Veteran. So let’s make this a Happy Veterans Day for all veterans, LGBT and otherwise.