Commonwealth' is not a word I ever used growing up in Colombo. There, in the late 1950s, it would have meant little more than New Zealand lamb and Anchor butter at the cold stores.

I probably felt most out of place as a young kid growing up in Sri Lanka. My mental world was somewhere else, partly because of reading and daydreaming.

When I was growing up, I don't think I knew any other child who had been out of Sri Lanka.

Writing is incredibly important to me as a way of handling the world, understanding how it works.

I went home one night and told my dad that an older kid was picking on me. My Dad, a Korean War vet and a Chicago cop for 30 years, told me, 'You better pick up a brick and hit him in the head.' That's when I thought, 'Wow, I'm going to have to start dealing with things in a different way.'

Refusing to lift sanctions and adopting tougher rhetoric toward Iran would not be partisan issues. Plenty of Democrats think that those actions are both good politics and good policy.

Today, war of necessity is used by critics of military action to describe unavoidable response to an attack like that on Pearl Harbor that led to our prompt, official declaration of war, while they characterize as unwise wars of choice the wars in Korea, Vietnam and the current war in Iraq.

Cliches about supporting the troops are designed to distract from failed policies, policies promoted by powerful special interests that benefit from war, anything to steer the discussion away from the real reasons the war in Iraq will not end anytime soon.