I was born in 1965, and for roughly the first decade of my life, there was a war in Vietnam. I lived in West Des Moines, Iowa, and there weren't a lot of anti-war demonstrations going on there, at least none that I remember. But what I do remember was that the ongoing war was just something that was taken as a given. My friends and I took it for granted that if you were a boy, turning 18 meant joining the army and going to Vietnam. We all knew people who had older brothers there, and I distinctly remember asking a visitor to explain what all the ribbons on his uniform meant.

I've grown up with this feeling that war is a state of existance that we fall back into if we forget to keep struggling for peace. I'm not sure -- intellectually -- if that is true, but emotionally, given my earliest memories, it certainly rings true to me.

My wife and I watched an episode of "Boston Public" that the TiVo had picked up, and in the episode, the principal confronts a student who had just hit his girlfriend. Aside from all the other things he said, one of the sections stood out for me: "When you are in a situation and you don't know what to do, pick the hardest thing." That has certainly been true in my life -- picking the easiest way has usually led to situations that either do not benefit me, or create a scenario from which there is no escape. Picking the hardest path challenges you to rise up above the things that are unimportant, and to choose a better path.

My gut feeling is that while choosing to go to war is hard, it wasn't necessarily the hardest choice.

Okay, so maybe I DID get into the debate a little bit.

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