The first article detailed the Army’s effort to recruit older soldiers. I read it, looked at my wife in disgust, and said something like, “America is just too soft to fight a long war.”

I kept reading on to the second story — describing a firefight in an Iraqi town — and read how an officer was wounded (a man about my age) and used a reporter’s satellite phone to literally call home, to tell his wife and two children that he was hurt but that he’d be ok.

That’s when my conscience stopped me cold. America wasn’t too soft to fight a long war. I was too soft.

And I had no excuse. Think about that wounded officer. Did he love his wife less than I loved my wife? Did he love his kids less than I love my kids? Yet he was risking everything, and I was risking nothing.