This summer I had the good fortune of interning in Washington, D.C., a place where delusions of grandeur are the rule, not the annoying exception.

In our nation’s capital, nothing is more important than the “hot” issue. One day it’s campaign finance reform, the next human cloning, the next the patient’s bill of rights, and so on and so forth. While my daily dose of highlighting news clippings and giving Capitol tours prevented me from becoming too enamored of my own importance, I was as obsessed as anyone with the issue of the day.

At least until a hot Saturday in July.

While I had visited the Vietnam, Lincoln, Korean, and FDR memorials several times on recent trips to Washington, I knew a trip to Washington is just not complete unless you can say you did the monuments.

While approaching the Vietnam memorial, I saw it overrun by 10 year old boys in khaki shirts and multicolored handkerchiefs. I later found that Washington, D.C. was playing host to the national Boy Scout jamboree, and over 20,000 of the rather annoying young tourists had overrun everything from the monuments to the Capitol to the Metro. But as I approached the black granite wall, everyone, Boy Scouts included, fell silent.

The reason for the somberness was captured in a conversation I overheard near the Lincoln Memorial between two Boy Scout leaders, one the age of a Vietnam vet.

“I went again to the Vietnam Memorial this afternoon, but I still couldn’t see it. This time I made it as far as the statue, but I couldn’t go any farther.”

“I understand,” replied the second leader.

But could he, or I, really? The Vietnam Memorial is incredibly plain, at least compared to the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial between which it stands. But the power it exudes is matched only by reading the Gettysburg Address on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial. The feeling as you walked past the names of more than 58,000 dead or missing is nearly indescribable … reverence … wonder … sadness … gratefulness … the knowledge that all the bickering and politics in Washington is so petty and insignificant in comparison.

Few campuses are more aware of the divisiveness of the Vietnam War than UW. Just last semester a minor spat sprang up in the Opinion pages about the “rightness” of Vietnam protester and Sterling Hall bomber Karl Armstrong owning a restaurant on State Street.

Similarly, there is no end to the debate about the “rightness” of the U.S. being involved in Vietnam. Even during the war itself many leading commentators, such as the New York Times and Washington Post editorial pages, switched sides. The bickering has continued on the national stage, most recently with the allegation that former Sen. Robert Kerry ordered the killing of Vietnamese villagers.

But none of those debates touch on the individual soldier. Whether they volunteered or were drafted, what gave those young men (average age: 19) now memorialized on “The Wall” the motivation to fight?

Is there any other possible answer than freedom?

No doubt some of the soldiers in Vietnam shared the sentiments of their peers back home that the war was not worth the human toll. It is even more certain many resented the lack of support in the U.S.. Yet in the Vietnam War 243 Congressional Medals of Honor were earned, along with countless other awards.

On a wall of the nearby Korean Memorial is inscribed the phrase: “Freedom is never free,” and on the ground, “Our nation honors her sons and daughters who answered the call to defend a country they never knew and a people they never met.”

The flagpole at the Vietnam memorial bears an inscription that reads, “THIS FLAG REPRESENTS THE SERVICE RENDERED TO OUR COUNTRY BY THE VETERANS OF THE VIETNAM WAR. THE FLAG AFFIRMS THE PRINCIPLES OF FREEDOM FOR WHICH THEY FOUGHT AND THEIR PRIDE IN HAVING SERVED UNDER DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES.”

Maybe most of the young men and women that fought in the Vietnam War were not quite so idealistic as these memorials make them out to be. Maybe their days were consumed with the next few hours, sorrow and anger over the death of a friend, or thoughts about the girl they left behind.

But whether or not you agree with the U.S.’s involvement in the Vietnam War, there is no denying that those individual soldiers were fighting under a flag that stands for freedom. The Wall provides a sobering reminder that while I and the rest of Washington moan and groan about the right to sue an HMO, 30 years ago my peers were giving the ultimate sacrifice.