Our fallen cops — along with US military veterans — deserve our gratitude

Forty-eight on-duty police officers were shot to death in the United States last year — nearly five times the number of American servicemen who died in Afghanistan in 2020. We’ll remember the military’s fallen today, as we must — but what about those cops?

A radical notion, given the state of the national political debate right now? It shouldn’t be. America has never been bashful about honoring those who die in its service. What is arguably the most eloquent encomium to war dead in the English language — Abraham Lincoln’s 270-word address at the Gettysburg battlefield in November 1863 — set an enduring standard.