Back in February 2003 my wife and I joined twenty other Americans standing on the corner near my small Virginia town's only traffic light to hold up signs protesting the impending invasion of Iraq by U.S. forces. Some drivers honked approval and waved while others flipped us off. Two years later, after the war had devolved into an occupation, we joined a quarter of a million demonstrators in Washington D.C., demanding an end to the killing that had characterized the George W. Bush's "global war on terror" (GWOT). It was the first and only time I have marched for peace. I was not particularly surprised to note on the following day that the neocon Washington Post had decided not to cover the event.

Coming from a family that had sent its men off to fight in every war since World War One and having myself been drafted for Vietnam, I have long esteemed America's citizen soldiers, which is not to say I believe in the legitimacy of the wars that have sucked them in and killed them in large numbers. During Vietnam I noted that many of my college classmates were anti-war solely because of concern for their own well-being, not because they had any deep understanding of or interest in what might be at stake in Southeast Asia.