INTERESTING LINK TO THE WAR ON TERROR

I just saw an article in a that remided me of an important conversation I had with someone a year and a half ago:

I remember going to the AEPi Northeast Regional Conclave in the Spring of 2002 in Toronto, and I had a conversation with one of the alumni who was involved in the fraternity leadership with whom I was friendly and somehow I think I ended up mentioning that I had been in the Air Force ROTC program when I started at MIT, and I said one of the reasons I left the program was because I was against the military and didn't believe in war and such. The alum probably asked me if I didn't think it was necessary for the military to be in Afghanistan, and I said I thought there must be a better way to deal with the problems there, and so he asked me a simple question for which I had no answer: "Well, what's the alternative then?"

I'm grateful the alum was unfraid to put me on the spot when I probably didn't have a good answer, because it forced me to think seriously about such an important thing. As time passed, I sought possible answers and realized that there probably are none, and that there's a time for laying down your arms and a time for picking them up, and that the US didn't deserve what it got on September 11th and that the nation had to respond with force, albeit a painful decision to make for a lot of people.

Today, that alumnus, Elon Carr, is serving in the US military in Baghdad and he has published an interesting article about his experiences there.

<http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/7634637.htm>