What to say, this Thanksgiving? I’ve been mucking around in UN news (Syria has been reappointed to the committee that oversees human rights matters at UNESCO), and world news (stacks of reports on Iran and its nuclear bomb program) and national news (Obamacare, debt, spending, more spending, and the soaring price of turkey). It’s a gloomy scene, and I was starting to figure I’d have to default to such private matters as the old family recipe for pecan pie, which my mother actually swiped from someone else’s family a few decades back (it calls for a 25 cent package of pecans).

And then, a friend sent the most marvelous video, and it is of course brilliantly obvious. Profound thanks to America’s magnificent armed forces. Thank you to the men and women who have served, and who are serving right now. We will toast you around the table, and we thank you every day, not only for protecting this country, but for embodying the courage and determination that has always been a vital element of American freedom and — you bet — American greatness.

Here it is, a lift for Thanksgiving, or any other time, 5-1/2 minutes well worth your time. A salute from the marching band of West Virginia University, to our armed forces — all five of them.

I can’t resist the wicked suggestion that if an American president, at the next UN General Assembly opening, were to devote 5-1/2 minutes of his allotted speech-making slot to showing the world worthies this video — a message from the American people — it might send the likes of the Iranian, Cuban, Chinese, Russian and Venezuelan delegations into fits. But I promise you, long after the spluttering died down, it would do wonders for that hallowed old cause of world peace.