Over the Christmas holidays, I was watching some war footage with two of my teenage sons. There was a child in the film, looked to be about 5 years old, sitting beside its dead mother and crying. Then there was a man carrying his bloody and broken child, beyond repair. I started to cry. This was a shock to my kids. It just came.

The only other time I cried in front of them was several years ago, when I learned that a promising young man I knew, also when he was only a boy, had lost his life in Iraq. I picked up the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, saw the headline, and it took my breath away.

So here I was over the Christmas holidays, watching war footage, and though I tried, I couldn’t keep back the tears. This was embarrassing. Then my boys started to cry too.

Am I a softy? Perhaps. Am I a weakling? I don’t think so. I was an Airborne soldier in the Army, and before that a state wrestling champion. But you have to care, I told my boys. You have to care...