I am a veteran myself who served two years in a foreign country beginning when I was 19. That was a long time ago and it was the last time I supported a U.S. war. Vietnam was an absolute fiasco, as is the current conflict in Iraq. I don’t refer to the Iraq operation as a “war” in a constitutional sense because it isn’t a war declared by Congress under its specifically enumerated war powers in Article I of the Constitution. In fact if anyone would bother to read the Constitution they would see that virtually all specifically enumerated war powers lie with Congress and not with the president. For example, Congress has the specific power to “provide for the common defense,” and “make rules for the armies and navies.” There are more but you get the point. The president, on the other hand, holds a constitutional office called “Commander in chief.” There are absolutely no specifically named powers in the U.S. Constitution for the office of commander in chief. All of the powers claimed by the Bush administration (and other administrations) arise from a concept called “unitary executive,” under which the Executive, as a co-equal branch of government, is not accountable in any respect to either the Congress or the Supreme Court. The concept isn’t specifically enumerated in the Constitution. It’s merely one form of constitutional interpretation among thousands. Its application has been more successfully applied under the Bush administration because the Republican congress has rolled over and played dead. If my memory of obscure facts in American history is accurate, the “unitary executive” principle was discussed by the Founders but eventually passed over in favor of a more-powerful congress. If they were smart enough to put together the present U.S. Constitution in 1787 (ratified in 1789), they must have anticipated the potential rise of screwballs to power 200-plus years later. They didn’t, unfortunately, foresee a roll-over, play dead, compliant bunch of spaghetti-spined career politicians.
Regarding your son’s imminent assignment to Iraq, I fully understand his point of view although I don’t agree with it. Young men live on testosterone time. Military service is a “man thing.” Among many, it’s what men do. Alexander the Great once remarked that if he had an army of seventeen year olds he could conquer the world. He didn’t mean that literally. He just meant that wars are young men’s initiation rites. In retrospect, I can see that my enlistment was a function of my age and the pre-existing value system in which I was born and raised. Men (boys really) who did not volunteer were suspect, although in truth those who remained behind spent a lot of time banging the girl friends and wives of the patriots. Maybe that’s why elites like Cheney, Gingrich, et al, really opted out of the Vietnam War. Hordes of ignorant substitutes were available. Elites have always lived by a code which tells them there are other lives less worthy or, as I heard the spoiled offspring of a high-level politician whine on television the other day, “there are other sacrifices we can make.” I suppose this little twit’s “sacrifice” was being asked an embarrassing question on national television.
Your son will probably learn all of this one day. In the meantime, we should all pray (regardless of our beliefs) for his safe return and the safe return of every soldier, sailor, airman, and marine in Iraq and Afghanistan. The war on terror can best be waged by other means using 21st Century tactics devoid of Cold War overtones.

Thanks for the feedback, amosmag. I think you're right about war as young men's initiation rites. All the more reason to hold accountable those who cooked up reasons for this war. (Wolfowitz wasn't the only one, but look how, even now, he fights to make sure his name doesn't get smeared at the World Bank. As for those who didn't have the guts to rein in Bush when it counted, they don't get a free pass, either. If I knew this war was B.S. before it started, then so did they. Barbara Lee was one of the few to stand up for the truth.

Thanks for the feedback, amosmag. War as initiation rite pretty much sums it up.
All the more reason to hold accountable those who cooked pre-invasion "intelligence".
Wolfowitz wasn't the only one, and he won't be the only one to try and crawl away and into a lucrative new job.
As for those who didn't stand up and rein Bush in when it counted, they don't deserve to be reelected. Barbara Lee was one of the few who stood firm and spoke the truth.

Thank you, Sarah, for the comment. America is a violent culture. Every year around 20,000 Americans die on the streets of our country, dispatched to the hereafter mostly by their fellow Americans. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the sum total of homicides is more than the sum of Americans killed in all of the wars we’ve had since the country was formed in 1789. The Statistical Abstract of the United States, published every year by the Government Printing Office, documents all forms of violence in America since the feds began to collect data in 1900. Homicides are merely one category of violence around us. About 3,000,000 cases of child abuse are reported each year. These are abominable statistics and in the case of child abuse, absolutely disgusting. But in the context of our value system, violence is understandable. As a society we tacitly accept violence as a response to most of life’s frustrations. In my mind, we seem to extend our domestic culture of violence to our foreign policies. Real men don’t negotiate; they kick ass. If they can’t physically kick ass, they mount verbal assaults backed by the safety of a sort of invisible power structure behind them. Wolfowitz is a classic example of the latter. He uses the political power of the White House and the financial and monetary power of the U.S. economy as levers to force the "re-structuring” of economies if foreign governments want World Bank loans. Good riddance to this guy.
To me, it's odd that we condemn sex but tolerate violence.