Please welcome Molly Blake, a new columnist for Blue Star Families. Molly is a long-time journalist who has worked in television, print and new media and has a Master's Degree in English. She and her husband, a Marine Corps aviator, have two girls and currently live in Northern Virginia. They will PCS this summer to Marine Corps Air Station Yuma where Lt. Col. Blake will take command of VMA-311.

My husband and I are watching HBO’s 10-episode miniseries, “The Pacific.” It’s Tom Hanks’ latest on-screen history lesson detailing the WWII battles on the Pacific front. The Marines are wide-eyed and eager but no sooner after storming Guadalcanal, as the dirt and jungle grit cakes their faces and their uniforms tear, the war obviously begins to take its toll on the hubris of the young men.

In one scene, a young Marine, stubby pencil in hand, is writing a forlorn-sounding letter to his gal back home. The paper is weathered, and you can almost see the tiny scratched handwriting that will surely end up in a bound scrapbook amid black and white scarred photos of scraggly Marines. That was then.

Gone are the hand-written letters wedged into the pocket of a torn utility shirt. Gone are telegrams and framed front-page headlines. Today, our Marines blog about war. They email wives, parents and friends detailing living conditions and battle experiences. They skype. Marines upload YouTube videos of themselves playing the guitar and singing songs about coming home, the dusty Iraqi countryside as the backdrop. The spouses back at home dutifully catalog pictures emailed from their soldier, label them and submit them onto a shutterfly.com photo book. Wives blog too on their very own websites like Spousebuzz and CinCHouse.com.

The Congressional Military Family Caucus lobbies Congress on behalf of military families and non-profits and Blue Star Families champions military families and the terrific challenges we face during wartime. Military spouses have their own magazines, real estate dealings and deployment folklore (“My husband’s deployment lasted longer than your husband’s deployment”). And if an iPod deployment playlist is any indication – they are beginning to permanently define themselves by this nearly decade-long conflict. This is today’s war. This is now.

My husband is a Marine Corps aviator and has deployed multiple times. He is, in fact, scheduled to deploy again in the next year or so. Although I sometimes question the war and its seemingly wayward path, I understand the basic reasons why we are there and why we cannot abandon a people incapable of defending themselves. It’s the bully reasoning. The young, weak sibling is getting its assed kicked on the playground and the US military is the big, tough brother coming to the rescue.

But according to reports, there are fewer than 150 Marines in Iraq and there is already talk of an Afghanistan troop drawdown. We will leave eventually. The grunts will pack tents and supplies and gear and come home. Then what? We will be faced with a post-war age but the question is, what will it be like? What will happen to our military men, women and their families and for what will we be remembered?

The post WWII era was significant for defining an entire generation of people who earned themselves the moniker: The Greatest Generation. The post-Vietnam era was noteworthy for perhaps less idyllic circumstances. We saw a generation of vets sent off to an unpopular war only to return to a nation’s collective cold shoulder. Today our military and their families are thankfully, for the most part, respected. The ubiquitous 10% military discount. The newspaper articles featuring the heroic triumphs of our wounded warriors, the job opportunities for vets (Fortune Magazine recently called soldiers and Marines, “The new face of business leadership,” in the March 2010 issue) and as the IED became a household word, the incredible advancements in prosthetics and treatments for war-related injuries. We have seen our young men and women go to Iraq and Afghanistan, fight horrific battles and return disfigured, tormented and yet request to go back to battle with their unit or squadron. Far worse of course, is seeing young service members return in flag-draped coffins while the nation watches. Our injured Marines sweat through marathons, swim for miles and bike across our nation all in the name of their fallen comrades.

I wonder what will happen in the years when we are not fighting multiple wars. Will it all go back to the way it was pre-9/11 when the military was more notorious than celebrated? When movies, like “A Few Good Men,” educated civilians about honor, code reds and places like Gitmo and the first 27 bloody minutes in the 1998 WWII epic “Saving Private Ryan” stunned unsuspecting audiences. We cannot be stunned like that anymore. Death is live and unscripted and on the nightly news. In fact, when the war first began, Casualty Assistance Officers worked 24-hours a day, for fear that the media would broadcast service member deaths before a spouse or parent could be notified.

I worry a little. I worry that the dollar signs, the billions spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, will begin to cast a shadow on the Marines and Sailors. I want civilians to remember that many of the young men and women in uniform joined immediately following 9/11. I want them to know that despite the battles, the thousands of dead young people, men and women continue to join our all-volunteer force. They join out of honor or duty or belief in the need to protect our freedom. Our current service members will continue to train for battle, fly missions, and garner headlines. Our children will continue counting the number of schools they’ve attended. And our nation will thankfully continue to support our wounded Marines and soldiers.

And in a few years Tom Hanks will probably create another miniseries, like “The Pacific” that reminds us why we fought in the Middle East. It will show the gore, the destruction and illustrate why our nation should forever be grateful for the military, their families, for the widowed spouses and their beleaguered children. The scenes in the movie will be different. More blogging, more women soldiers, and unfortunately more death. But the message, as Aristotle reminds us, will be the same. We make war so that we may live in peace. At least some things stay the same.