MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Cut out Washington noise: Let’s pay respect to the men who died last week serving the U.S.

Although it’s fashionable to mock millennials and Generation Z as a “snowflake” generation, these men did not melt under pressure. They ran toward the sound of the guns and, though unarmed, took action.

John 15:13 says, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” And Gen. George S. Patton said that, “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.”

Both have a point, but it’s hard to feel that these young men who displayed such courage and self-sacrifice wouldn’t have brought a lot more to the world if they had been given the time. We can only be grateful that at a crucial moment, they chose as they did, even as we mourn that such a choice was forced on them.

Had their superiors done a better job, it wouldn’t have been.