I'll probably remember this for a long time. I was walking into the breakfast area of a small B&B in Paris with my high school classmates (French exchange trip senior year — I'd watched Bush's ultimatum live with my host family in their living room a few days before) when the anchor came on saying Coalition troops were launching an attack on one of the first towns along their route to Baghdad.

I distinctly remember wanting to shrink into a tiny ball and roll into the corner as all the other hotel guests turned and stared at us. I was very embarrassed, and sure the rest of the city would want to harass or assault us, or otherwise try to ride us out of town on a rail.

I would never feel embarrassed to be an American, ever. We may have issues but this is still the greatest nation on earth.

I was on spring break in Alaska driving between Fairbanks and the Kenai Pennisuala. Every time I hit a place that looked like it might have a radio station, I would scan the dial to see if war had been declared. Somewhere along the ride, I heard we were at war.

As for Sanna's comment and Singer's response, it may or may not be justified to be embarrassed to be an American but we should certainly be humble as a nation for our actions in Iraq. America can be a great nation — but only if we have the courage to critically compare our actions to the beliefs we profess and acknowledge when we fail to measure up to those beliefs. Iraq was one decision that we got wrong.

I say this as someone who supported the justification for the war from 2003 until I went there in 2008. I fear the next generation will look back someday and ask why we didn't ask our leaders tougher questions. I know I won't have an adequate answer for them.

Like the majority of our country, I believed our Intelligence Agencies knew the correct facts about this mission. I am now officially a skeptic. I have come to believe that ANY motive that our government professes for our involvement ANYWHERE in the Middle East is a cover for our primary reason to be there: liquid energy, cheap and abundant. So when my nephew (a Marine) started his second tour in Iraq, and third in the Middle East, I sold my car, and I haven't looked back. I couldn't face the possibility of losing him without knowing that I did everything in my power to eliminate the true reason why he and his buddies had to keep going back there.

This war---dunno probably just watching TV and waiting for shocker and awe to start......
The first gulf war, I was on a ski hill and they announced it over loudspeaker.

I went to a college preparatory school in 3rd grade, and kids began talking about how we're going to "kill Saddam and Osama" like they were equal threats to our national security and equally centered on destroying America. My school, very educated and wealthy, had a balance of liberal and conservative families. I feel like the rhetoric that many conservative kids heard from their parents made the conservative kids voices louder. As 3rd graders clearly do not understand war, and as I clearly did not understand any background on it, I think it was very strange that little kids in elementary school would be arguing about a war in a very political sense. The hyper-politicization of the war was felt then by me, and I still feel it today at age 17 (almost 18.) To me, considering I wasn't old enough to formulate a realistic opinion on the war, Iraq was simply an issue that put you on one side of the playground swing or the other.