[Note: I wrote this piece in 2003, shortly before the U.S. invaded Iraq].
 
The trouble with writing these opinion pieces is they require such intense emotional energy to write.  It’s a very exhausting business.  But then, so is life these days.  We all go about our lives quite admirably, but the low hum of threat, the “war and rumors of war” is wearing on us all.  

The intense emotion that I’m experiencing these days is sadness, produced by the news, produced by the innocence of so many of our students who are willing to fling themselves into the fray in the name of God, president and country.  It’s all too reminiscent of those equally innocent boys who threw themselves, during my parents’ lifetimes, into the defense of God, king and country.  One way or another, those boys were not innocent for long.

What amazes me is how surprised some of us are by all this, and I’m including myself in the “us.”  I shouldn’t be surprised.  After all, my parents survived two world wars in Great Britain and described the horrors of the second in vivid detail.  I think, though, it’s only been since September 11, 2001, I’ve truly understood what my parents experienced.  The stories they told me when I was a child enthralled me, kept me spellbound as they recounted them to me.  But I, too, was innocent.  The stories were family saga, not reality, shrouded in the mists of mythology for me.

My parents described the adventure …