MY grandma — we called her Mamaw — loved her country. Born in eastern Kentucky coal country at the beginning of the Great Depression, she credited so much of the good in her life to America’s bounty. When I interviewed her about her life for a school project, she spent most of the time talking about World War II: her dad’s love letters from the Pacific; how her younger brother lied about his age in an effort to enlist. “We did it,” she told me, still beaming with pride more than a half-century later. “We freed the whole world from tyranny.”

Mamaw said something else entirely when, just a few weeks after America invaded Iraq, I told her that I had enlisted in the Marine Corps. “You’re a grade-A idiot,” she shouted, and though her anger stemmed in part from worry, I knew that she saw the conflict as the indulgence of an elite president who knew nothing of sacrifice. She liked George W. Bush’s folksy demeanor and admired his Christian faith, but as the war dragged on, her criticisms grew increasingly personal.

To Mamaw, the president was the living embodiment of privilege, and he had cashed in when it mattered most: by joining the Texas Air National Guard while his less fortunate peers lost their lives in the jungles of Vietnam.

Though I never acquired Mamaw’s disdain for the president, I eventually learned that her wariness about the war was justified. Thirteen years later, the war’s costs are obvious, especially to military families. Though I avoided significant combat, many did not. One good friend suffered horrible burns when his vehicle rolled over a roadside bomb. Another came home traumatized; his alcoholism eventually landed him in prison. And the best that can be said of our nation’s effort is that we produced a feckless and disorganized Iraqi government.