We've all been talking a lot lately about the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

It started with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who brought a giggling group of his wife and pals there for a photo op on Veterans Day. A tomb sentinel issued a bone-chilling reprimand to the party for its disrespect, and the encounter crashed into social media like a tsunami.

Hegseth brushed off the controversy, giving the sentinel a medal for his trouble, and, on X, lightly ordered all patriots to carry on.

"We love standards," he wrote.

The tomb isn't about standards, though, and it certainly isn't about patriots.

I learned a little bit about the tomb, you see, including that there is one body inside the tomb's sarcophagus, which is decorated with wreaths and figures representing peace, victory and valor, and two more in crypts beside it. On its westernmost face is an inscription reading, "Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God."

Even to select the soldiers who would be laid in the tomb was a great honor, one of which was given to Sgt. Maj. Allan J. Kellogg Jr., awarded the Medal of Honor after literally throwing himself on a grenade during the Vietnam War to protect his fellow Marines.

Because what the tomb says is that, in our country, there are men we prize above all others — not for their power or wealth or accomplishments, but for their sacrifice.

The guards who stand outside these men's final resting places are allowed to do so only after displaying a spiritual dedication to their task. The sentinels train, and are tested, and accept the vocation with solemnity.

We do not honor political leaders or cultural icons or any men and women of consequence this way. The guards do not stand in blizzards at the graves of John F. Kennedy, George Washington or even Abraham Lincoln.

You cannot buy this kind of treatment in the afterlife. No soldiers will study and run drills and polish their shoes until they crack to protect Jeff Bezos when he's dead.

These guardians watch the tomb of men who could have been any race and any religion. We do not know whether the men inside died painfully, bravely or even willingly.

The only things we know about them are that they were Americans, and that they sacrificed all that they had, for us.

In trade, we give them the short shrift of glory and a promise to remember them when we put others' lives on the line in similar fashion.

There is a famous letter, purportedly written by Lincoln, to a widow who lost two of her sons in the Civil War.

"I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic they died to save.

"I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom."

I trust those with experience to tell me about the true nature of the sacrifice made in war. Here's what Gen. William T. Sherman — a man best known for burning his way through the South — had to say about it.

"I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting," he wrote. "Its glory is all moonshine. Even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands and fathers."

There is no brightness before that place, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the reminder of the gravity of war. One wishes Hegseth had looked around a bit more while he was there, perhaps giving himself a moment to reflect. What is he doing to our nation when he sends us to fight and die in Iran? Is he fulfilling his duty to those soldiers? Is he keeping the pact we make for their sacrifice, that it will be worth it?

It didn't seem Hegseth had much time to mull it over while he was there, so maybe he should watch an episode of "MASH." I'm thinking of this one for a start:

"War isn't hell," Hawkeye tells Father Mulcahy. "War is war, and hell is hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse."

"How do you figure that, Hawkeye?"

"Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to hell?"

"Sinners, I believe."

"Exactly," Hawkeye says as he operates. "There are no innocent bystanders in hell. But war is chock-full of them — little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander."

You see, Secretary Hegseth, you are one of the brass.

Those men lying dead behind you in your photo?

They were the bystanders.

Photo credit: Alexander Gluschenko at Unsplash