No, not that one. Suddenly it seems it's okay to be liberal. Or if not exactly okay, then it's a little hard to see who is and who isn't: Is Rep. Murtha, the decorated combat veteran attacked by the Bush Administration for "cowardice," liberal now that he's trying to get the troops home? It's so unclear the issue of who is and who isn't that other "L" word  may be close to dead. No. The new "L" word (I hope I don't get busted for writing this) is "legacy."

But why should I get busted if everybody else is using it too? So much I'm sick of it. It's everywhere.  But okay. Once more: legacy.

Legacy as in, what's got the folks in power suddenly very worried indeed. The commander-in-chief is going through with the troop "surge" no matter what anybody says (even if the only ones who support him are his dog and his wife, as he so winningly says): he's worried (we read) about his legacy. The plan is to sign up "mega-donors" ($10-$20 million a pop) for his huge presidential library and think tank, to be set at SMU in Dallas-unlike all other presidential libraries at universities, not answerable to the university, but to its own board-the better for like-minded scholars to write articles that burnish the legacy. Suddenly the administration is willing to talk to critics, even have them included in the administration: General Petraeus was a critic, now he's in charge. Prof. Eliot Cohen was a critic, now he's been hired by the Secretary of State. All that is legacy too, the pundits tell us: if you get worried enough about what the history books say, you'll do just about anything. Even listen to the opposition.

Indeed so central has worrying about legacy become to the administration, I'd say it's the "new" GWOT, Global War on Terror, just the way pink (or is it green?) is the new black. It's become the "L" word not because we don't say it, but because we do: over and over and over. Everything is legacy.

To us outsiders, it seems a petty concern: how will history rate President X or Secretary Y? They care; we don't. In fact we may be one of the historians doing the rating, not the person who suddenly feels powerless because when he or she exits stage right, the bully pulpit is gone.

But hey, you might say, that's politics.

I say, wait a minute. I say your "legacy" is my midshipmen - for starters.

I deal daily with the ones who are going to be sent, assuming that US engagement in Iraq continues as long as it probably will (the current administration has all but promised to leave the resolution to the president elected in 2008). Some of the ex-midshipmen at the Naval Academy are in Iraq already, or have been there and come back walking. Some have come back in boxes. One of our best English department students, a SEAL who taught in our department for a time after graduation, now lies between empty graves already marked for his parents over on Hospital Point, the Naval Academy's cemetery.

A politician may say "legacy" and think of his or her position in the history books, the size of his presidential library, control of what the pundits say. Me, I hear "legacy" and think real human beings who are sent in harm's way in an attempt to assure it. They die, at worst, so that history regards X or Y in a slightly more positive light.

These are people in whom (in some cases) I've personally invested myself, like a temporary parent; of course real parents are those who lose the most when an unattached son or daughter, in whom reside countless hours of homework, soccer practice, lectures to look both ways before crossing the street, is flown back to Dover covered by a flag.

I think of the men and women of whom The Washington Post periodically runs pictures under the rubric "Faces of the Fallen."

Sometimes, when I'm not looking for someone in particular (those times are bad), I just let my eyes drift over these rows and rows of pictures. But even when I don't know the individuals, all these engaging young faces are profoundly moving. Sometimes the pictures are official photographs with the flag. Sometimes they're blurry, snapshots, or high school graduation pictures. Each of them has a rank, and a hometown, and usually either a goofy grin or a steely "let the enemy beware" look in his or her eye.

That's what I think when I hear that a politician is busy burnishing his or her "legacy." The decision to send more troops is a "legacy" decision. To the young men and women who have signed on to serve (and their families), it's hardship, and for some, death.

Not to mention death and hardship for the Iraqi populace, whose mortality figures (a spate of recent articles points out) the American public grossly underestimates. It turns out most of us know that just over 3,000 Americans have died, but instead of actual estimates of 54,000 Iraqis (34,000 in the last year alone), guess, on median, just under 10,000. The powers that be are playing craps with history-and with real people's lives. It's no longer about Saddam, WMDs, or democracy. It's about the "legacy" of some politicians.

From the comfort of the capital city, where no one is shooting at the leader, to the reality of life on the ground in wherever the war is, is a big jump-whatever the war, and whatever the countries involved. The WW I German grunts of the most searing of all war novels, All Quiet on the Western Front, discuss this very issue in a different war, a different country, and with a different leader.

The novel follows a group of men in one particular company through several bloody years in the trenches until finally all are killed, the narrator Paul on a day the newspapers summarize merely with the phrase "all quiet on the Western front" (im Westen nichts Neues). Fairly late in the game they company is inspected by their commander-in-chief, the Kaiser. They're not impressed: he's a shrimpy guy without the booming voice they'd imagined. They wanted a giant they could be proud to follow. What they got was a less than impressive person, a (hereditary) politician.

This leads to a discussion. They personally have nothing against the French whom they fight. So why are they doing it? One of the group suggests, "one country offends another country." They chew over this, noting that they don't feel offended. No, says another, the oldest one, nicknamed Kat. "Every full-grown emperor requires at least one war, otherwise he would not become famous." Even these grunts realize they're in it for the legacy of the head man, who may come occasionally and inspect them, but doesn't lead the charge.

So yes. It's always been this way. But knowing that soldiers are sent in harm's way by people whose ultimate concern is with "legacy"- their own, not that of the Soldiers - doesn't make it any easier to accept.