The war in Iraq was brought back home to me the other day with the sudden and shocking information that the friend I saw off almost a year ago was hit in a convoy ambush. He took shrapnel in the neck and had to be operated on, and remained in unstable condition for a couple of days until finally pulling through enough to be flown back to the United States. He remains, temporarily voiceless, at the Army hospital in Washington, DC.

For so long now it has seemed as though the conflict were over. Sure, the casualty reports keep trickling in, but it has ceased to be headline news; it is more of an irritating background situation, like a mosquito buzzing somewhere in a dark room. I had almost convinced myself that it would never touch me, safe at school and thumbing my nose at the Army. So much for my complacence.

Let us remember that no matter how distant, the conflict is still very real, and still claiming the lives of the men attempting to maintain peace there. Our politicians act surprised that it takes ten times as many men to control an area as it does to merely conquer it. Did we learn nothing from Vietnam about the tenacity of natives on their own ground?