He looks so much like one of my younger students from last spring at Grays Harbor College ...

Spc. Harley Dean Andrews, 1984 - 2006

I wouldn't have even known about this young man except that his mother lives in Portland south of here and his picture popped up in the paper with a short squib about his being disillusioned with the war before he was killed on Monday when an IED exploded near his vehicle in Ramadi.

Twenty-two years old ... a man, yes; but for me who teaches young men that age ... a kid.

He didn't join the Army to be a hero -- he didn't even join the Army because he had dreamed of being a soldier. He joined because he hated school, was able to take the high school equivalency exam that the Army gives ... and "upped," largely to provide a future for his son (now one) since he felt he wasn't getting anywhere.

After enlisting, "he was proud to be a soldier!" his mother said.

He is a hero ... in every sense of the word.

Besides confiding in his mother that he was "disillusioned" about the war, he elaborated that it really "distressed" him. "it's just dirty!" is the way he described it to his mother in Portland.

He married a girl named Halley (their friends called them "Har" and "Hal") and their little boy, Ayden Dean, is one.

This is now Har's, Hal's and Aiden's war ... as well as President Bush's.

I can say that each time I read of another youngster who is killed in Iraq, I think of what John Kerry said as a demonstrator after he left the military during the Vietnam War era, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?....We are here in Washington to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country - the question of racism which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions such as the use of weapons; the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage at the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions."

That was in 1971! I honestly had forgotten the exact quote and its appropriateness until I read about "Har" and then went to Google to find it and re-read it. It's as applicable today -- especially after the vote by the Senate Armed Services Committee this week -- as ever.

Spc. Andrews had only a month to go before the end of his tour in October.

His funeral arrangements are pending.