One of the first things they do when they are rotated back to the US is go for new tattoos. Why?

To add new experiences, new chapters, images that came to them in dreams during long nights, half a world away from home. To remember fallen comrades, to add more armor against the horrors of war they've witnessed, to prove they are still alive.

Men who were affected by 9/11. While the rest of the country stood still, mouths agape in horror and disbelief, these men and men like them ran in to the recruitment office, or pressed for transfer to the Rangers, knowing they would be the first to be placed in harm's way, to punish, to retaliate, to bring justice to the world.

In this way, they're not us. They are the best of us.

Once, the stigma associated with tattoos was that only sailors, whores and criminals had them. Clearly, tattoos have spread from rebel elements of society to the mainstream. Why? Is it the need for something permanent in a disposable society? Is it a rejection of the unattainability and sarcasm of contemporary art by the common man? Again, look around you. People with tattoos are not only bikers and rebels. They are mothers and fathers and teachers and lawyers and businessmen and women. They are us.

Army Rangers. The most highly trained, elite force of the army. "The Tip of the Sword." More than one Ranger told me "When everyone else is running out, we're running in." Each battalion has deployed multiple times, some as many as 12 or 13 times, always to the most dangerous areas of the war. Why? Simple, they say. Rangers lead the way.

Tattoos are the narrative art of the 20th century. Much like the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt and the Flemish tapestries of the middle ages, tattoos form a symbolic history of our time. While not all tattoos have historical or narrative significance, non-representational, mainstream art has moved away from storytelling and has been replaced by photography, photojournalism and video as the primary media of historical content. Tattooing has thus become the human, non-technological visual medium for telling stories and recording history.

Who are the people who defend us from harm?

Politicians and media speak of deployments of 50,000 or 100,000

men, a number most of us cannot comprehend.

Just a huge mass of faceless robots.

Consider, each of these "robots" has a mother, a father, a wife or husband,

boyfriends, girlfriends, aunts, uncles, cousins

and children, and suddenly, that number has grown exponentially,

which means, as you pass through your life and look around,

someone you see is intimately related to someone who is risking their life

to protect your freedom.

They're not strangers, they are us.