What's that supposed to mean?

The Boise Guardian has a post carping about the low turnout in the election, and tossed in this graf at the end.

At the risk of being accused of a quantum leap in irony, we have to ponder how many “warriors” of the Idaho National Guard and their loved ones didn’t vote in local elections, but risk their lives so the people of Iraq and Afghanistan will have a democratic government.

Note the quotation marks around the word warriors. TBG isn't quoting there, so the quotation marks appear to have the function of calling attention to the word in an ironic way. How that hit me was, okay, everybody calls these people warriors, but we know they're not really warriors.

If that's not what you meant, TGB, please explain. And if it is, bite me.