Last night, I made a simple request on X. I asked if anybody visiting Arlington National Cemetery for Memorial Day would stop by Alan’s grave and leave a photo for our family. What happened next honestly caught me off guard. By this afternoon, dozens of Americans from all walks of life had made the walk to Section 60 to visit SSG Alan W. Shaw. Veterans. Families. Complete strangers. People who had never met Alan, but chose to honor him anyway. For one day on social media, people put aside the constant noise and negativity and came together for something bigger than themselves. My notifications filled with photos, kind messages, prayers, and stories from people honoring not just Alan, but so many of our fallen heroes. I don’t think people fully understand what moments like this mean to Gold Star families. The fear is never just losing them. It’s losing them slowly over time as the world moves on and fewer people remember their name. But today showed me that Alan will never be forgotten. After years of watching social media reward some of the worst parts of humanity, today gave me a reminder that the good is still out there too. Thank you to every single person who stopped by to visit Alan today, said his name, shared his story, or took a moment to honor the fallen. This right here is the America Alan knew and loved enough to fight and die for. And today, y’all showed us all that it’s still here and it’s still worth fighting for. 🇺🇸

Indeed… From a wife’s perspective, the ACUs made life a lot easier. I did, however, find myself missing the smell of boot polish in the evenings. There was something about mixing that with Jack Daniel’s and whatever my 23-year-old self was trying to come up with for dinner that made the house feel like home. Alan held out as long as he could. I think that was the Marine in him. 😊

I don’t know what’s going on with John’s account, but I do know mine has doubled in the last two months because of all the amazing patriots I’ve met along the way. 🇺🇸😊♥️

When Alan and I first got to Fort Hood, all we owned was what we could fit on a 15-foot open trailer. It wasn’t much. We even had to borrow kitchen utensils from a place on post where you could check them out. We had our mattress on the floor, the kids had their bunk beds, and that was about it. He never got a signing bonus, so we arrived with next to nothing. Just a few weeks later, he deployed to Iraq for the first time. For him, the transition from the Marine Corps to the Army was pretty simple. He was still an infantryman. The job was the same. He just had to tone it down a little as a Soldier instead of a Marine. Me? I had no idea what I was doing. One week I was going to class every day in Arkansas. The next, I was dropped into the middle of a military base surrounded by people and a culture I didn’t know. One of the first things I did was find Walmart. Being from Arkansas, I figured if there was a Walmart nearby, I’d be able to find whatever we needed. Anybody who knows anything about the Army knows pay issues happen all the time. He came in as an E-4 with six years of service, but his paperwork took forever to get fixed, so he was being paid as an E-4 with zero years. Needless to say, money was tight. The one thing he wanted to come home to after that deployment was a boat. We loved spending time at the lake, and he wanted to use his deployment money to make sure we could do that. I had a different idea. Remember, we had no furniture. After about two months of sitting on the floor, I’d had enough. We’d finally gotten paid, so I loaded all three kids into the Tahoe and drove down to a little furniture store off Rancier. Anybody who knows Fort Hood knows exactly which one I’m talking about. I spent $1,000 on the biggest OD green couch and loveseat you’ve ever seen. That couch was so wide two people could comfortably lay on it, and I absolutely fell in love. Looking back, spending a thousand dollars on a couch when we had almost nothing probably wasn’t my finest financial decision, but I loved that thing. By the time his homecoming rolled around, I was sitting on that parade field shaking. Part of it was excitement. Part of it was anxiety because I knew exactly what was waiting for him in our duplex in Chaffee Village. The buses finally pulled up and the Soldiers formed up. We spotted him immediately. I’ll never forget the look on his face. I expected him to be excited to see us. I wasn’t prepared for how emotional he was. He was fighting back tears. When they finally released them, he scooped me and all three kids into the biggest bear hug imaginable. Then we went home. The moment of truth had arrived. He walked through that front door, took one look at that couch and loveseat, and just stopped. He was mad. Then he looked at me and said, “For that price, it should’ve come with a motor.” A few months later, we bought a little baby blue tri-hull boat that we named Smurf. He got his boat, and I got my couch. That couch stayed with us for years. In fact, I was sitting on it the day they came to tell me Alan wasn’t coming home. The house was full of chaos. People were talking. Everything felt unreal. Then my eyes landed on that giant OD green couch. Of all the things to be thinking about in that moment, all I could hear was Alan standing in that living room saying, “For that price, it should’ve come with a motor.” And I laughed. God help me, I laughed. Sometimes your mind gives you exactly what you need to survive the moment. 😊

“Decisively, devastatingly, and without mercy…” 🔥🔥🔥

To the Commission, As a Gold Star spouse, I am grateful that our nation is finally building a memorial to honor those who served and sacrificed during the Global War on Terrorism. This generation answered the call after September 11th and carried the burden of nearly two decades of war. Their service deserves to be remembered. That said, I have serious concerns about the proposed design. When I look at the concept images, I see an abstract landscape. I see architecture, symbolism, and reflection spaces. What I do not see are the men and women who fought these wars or the names of those who never came home. My husband, SSG Alan Shaw, was killed in Iraq in 2007. He was 31 years old. He had a name. He had a family. He had children who grew up without their father. Like thousands of others, his sacrifice was not abstract. Nothing about the current design makes me want to take my grandchildren there to learn about their grandfather and the sacrifices made by him and thousands of others. A national memorial should do more than inspire reflection. It should teach. It should tell a story. It should ensure that future generations understand who served, who sacrificed, and what was lost. The men and women we lost were not concepts. They were individuals with dreams, families, and futures that ended in service to this country. I believe names matter because names force us to confront the true cost of war. They transform statistics into people. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial remains one of the most powerful memorials in our nation because visitors are immediately confronted with the scale of the sacrifice through the names of the fallen. The names are not a design element. They are the memorial. I am not opposed to symbolism or artistic expression, but I believe the Global War on Terrorism Memorial should provide direct recognition of those who made the ultimate sacrifice. If someone visits this memorial fifty years from now, they should not have to guess who it was built to honor. The memorial itself should tell that story clearly and unapologetically. The combat fallen deserve more than an abstract representation of their sacrifice. They deserve to be remembered by name. Respectfully, Sharrell Shaw Gold Star Spouse

I think this post gets to the heart of the disagreement, even if that wasn’t the intention. “Ensure every sacrifice is remembered and no one is left behind.” Most people will read that and immediately agree with it. I understand why. But I think it’s also the reason this memorial looks the way it does. If your primary goal is to ensure everyone touched by the Global War on Terrorism is represented equally, then you can’t place the combat fallen at the center. You can’t prominently feature the names of those killed in action. You can’t draw distinctions between different types of sacrifice. Instead, you create a memorial designed to encompass everyone’s experience. Some people may think that’s the right approach. Others look at it and see something very different. They see a memorial that started with the goal of including everyone and, in the process, lost focus on the people war memorials have traditionally been built to honor. For generations, Americans understood that a war memorial was first and foremost about those who never came home. The question being debated right now isn’t really about architecture. It’s whether we still believe that.

I’ve never watched to a @jockowillink podcast before. So I dove into his episode 192 recently. He started off going into this powerful monologue. Spitting absolutely warrior poet fire. Frankly I was taken aback. I mean this was POWERFUL stuff. Then he says one line that hit me hardest: “Eventually you and the men by your side have lived lifetimes worth of life in a matter of months. And those men, the ones that survive, become your brothers. And the ones that don’t survive, become your heroes.” After reading a little more from the paper he was looking at, he reveals those are the words of Sean Parnell @SeanParnellASW from the book ‘Outlaw Platoon’. Absolutely epic warrior prose. And given the current environment where we are arguing over how to remember the GWOT, it hits harder than ever. The ones that didn’t survive became our heroes. We would do well to remember that and act accordingly. All we ask from our countrymen is to be Americans worth giving the last full measure of devotion for. So that if there is no choice for us but to charge into the abyss, we do so knowing it isn’t all in vain. And that we do it for more than because the law tells us to. The law can compel obedience. Only love of country compels righteous sacrifice.

Stop digging, please. The footsteps are an interesting idea, but not as a replacement for displaying the names of the thousands of Americans who fell in combat in Iraq, Afghanistan, & elsewhere. The reality of classified missions or suicides does not preclude naming the fallen.

Today, I’m releasing never before seen intelligence revealing new evidence of past US government funding for more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries, including Ukraine. In support of President Trump‘s Executive Order to end federal funding of dangerous gain of function research around the world, and increase transparency and accountability, ODNI will continue working with partners across the Administration to identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain, and what “research” is being conducted. odni.gov/index.php/newsroom/…

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the proposed GWOT Memorial and trying to understand the vision behind it. But the more I think about what a GWOT memorial should be, the more I find myself coming back to this photograph. Because this picture right here speaks a thousand words. To me, this is everything we should never forget about the Global War on Terror. Three Battlefield Crosses for the men who came home draped in our nation’s flag. Three young warriors kneeling in front of them whose lives would never be the same. The fallen made the ultimate sacrifice, but the story of the sacrifices made by these three young warriors who stood up from that memorial and continued the mission needs to be told as well. In my humble observation, there’s a beauty in that which I struggle to adequately articulate. The fact that these men took this moment, stood up with the weight of the world on their shoulders, and continued the fight tells a story about a generation of warriors who were heroes in their own right. I don’t think this story is unique. In fact, I think it’s one of thousands. That’s why this image resonates with me far more than the artist rendering ever could. I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I don’t know exactly what the memorial should look like. What I do know is that this photograph evokes more emotion, more sacrifice, more brotherhood, and more truth than that rendering ever will. If we’re going to build a memorial to the GWOT generation, it should tell their story. 🇺🇸

Chris did an incredible job with this story. I really appreciate him and KATV taking the time to tell Alan’s story. That said, this report absolutely needs a “Taps” warning. You’d think after all these years I’d be prepared for it, but it gets me every time. 😭🇺🇸

We don’t want to be reminded of the forever nature of the Global War on Terror. We want to remember our brothers and sisters. By name. For eternity.

The more I look at this lighthearted monument idea. the more I think it accidentally captured the entire story of the Global War on Terror. Not the war itself, but what it became. A giant restraint stretched across open ground, another buckle fastened by people convinced that every problem can be solved by tightening the strap one more notch. Those of us who fought that war were not fragile. We crossed oceans, climbed mountains, walked through cities filled with bombs, and carried burdens that would break most people. Yet somewhere along the way an entire generation of leaders became convinced that the greatest threat to those men was not the enemy, but risk itself. What followed was twenty years of wrapping warriors in procedures, approvals, permissions, reviews, assessments, oversight mechanisms, and legal opinions until the institution slowly forgot the difference between protecting a force and restraining it. Every buckle arrived with good intentions. Every layer was justified. Every restriction was sold to us as profound wisdom. Nobody noticed that the accumulation of caution was producing its own form of recklessness. We became so obsessed with preventing small failures that we lost the ability to achieve great successes. That is the lesson staring back at me from this seemingly funny image. Civilizations are not preserved by eliminating danger. They are preserved by producing men capable of confronting it. A people that spends enough time worshipping safety eventually begins treating courage like a pathology and initiative like a threat. The instinct for survival remains, but it becomes detached from the willingness to act. History has never been kind to societies that make that trade. What makes this monument joke so powerful is that it unintentionally captures the hangover of an entire era. An era spent tightening straps while the muscles beneath them slowly atrophied. An era spent managing risk while forgetting that the greatest risks are often the ones created by excessive caution. If the Global War on Terror means anything, it should be this: never again confuse bureaucracy for strategy, process for progress, or restraint for strength. The buckle is perfect. Not because it honors what we were. Because it reminds us what we became. And it reminds us what we should never be again. Cautious to the point of calamity.