The Reckoning.

By NANCY GIBBS

"Show me a hero," F. Scott Fitzgerald dared us, "and I will write you a tragedy." For Navy seal Michael Monsoor, heroism and tragedy arrived together, when the grenade thrown onto the Ramadi rooftop he patrolled bounced off his chest; he could escape--and let it kill his two comrades--or throw himself on top of it and trade his life for theirs.

The Medal of Honor, President George W. Bush said at the White House on April 8, when he presented it to Monsoor's parents, is "awarded for an act of such courage that no one could rightly be expected to undertake it." The ceremony unfolded on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad and on a day of Senate hearings on the progress of the war. Half a world away, the streets of the Iraqi capital were empty under a military curfew to prevent car bombings. Down Pennsylvania Avenue, Democrats and Republicans competed over who could describe the early conduct of the war in the most devastating terms, even as they debated where to go from here and what it would take to get there. This was war and remembrance in three-part harmony. Above all, the doubt and division toll the bell for the soldier whose valor, at least, was invulnerable.

Bush is home from his last long tour abroad; the political world is focused on the race to succeed him; his lieutenants are leaving to write books explaining all that was not their fault. There is no way to know what he makes of this or how he processes the price of his policies. But the Tuesday medal ceremony, when he stood by George and Sally Monsoor and told Michael's story, provided a glimpse--not of a President with any doubt of the justice of his cause but certainly of a man reckoning with its cost. Bush talked about the rebellious little boy who grew into a resourceful and remarkable man before he died on that roof on St. Michael's Day, Sept. 29, 2006. "America owes you a debt that can never be repaid," he told Monsoor's parents, and as the full citation was read, Bush's eyes narrowed and glimmered, then his face reddened and shook as the tears fell, and it was all he could do to keep his hands at his sides, until he could not any longer and put an arm around the fallen soldier's mother.