Ballots mailed on Friday to Helena voters contained two nonbinding referendums: Referendum 2007-1 asks voters whether they're for or against urging Congress "to authorize and fund an immediate and orderly withdrawal of the United State's military from Iraq." Referendum 2007-2 asks whether they're for or against urging Congress "to fund the United States military forces totally and without conditions in the global war on terror."

For our part, we think it's well past time to begin bringing our troops home from Iraq, so we recommend voting for Referendum 2007-1. And of course it would be unwise to adopt a blank-check, no-matter-what policy toward funding anything, including the fight against terrorists, so we'd suggest a "no" vote on the second referendum.

That said, we'd like to congratulate both sides and the community as a whole for the civil, nonconfrontational manner in which this debate has played out. This is a divisive issue about which feelings naturally are running high, making the temptation to ramp up the rhetoric difficult to resist. But to a very large degree, that temptation has been resisted.

It sometimes is said that these issues really have no place in a municipal election, and moreover that such referendums are meaningless because, after all, Helenans have no power to affect the nation's foreign relations.

Well, yes and no. To be sure, the resolutions are binding on no one, least of all a president unlikely to ever face voters again. But there certainly is value in bringing a kind of formality to the discussions we've all been having with our families and friends. These ballot issues give people a chance to put their beliefs about the wisdom of this county's actions on record, elevating them above mere bar talk or sputtering at the TV set.

And ultimately, our views do matter in a democracy. Like all the similar resolutions voted on in hundreds of other cities across the country, our voices, added together, cannot be ignored by our representatives in Washington. Indeed, our voices could turn out to be more powerful than we know.

The war in Iraq often is compared to the war in Vietnam, despite the many differences between the conflicts. But there is one difference here at home that is stunning to those of us who lived through both eras: Our universal concern and compassion this time for our troops. It is that very compassion that drives opposition to the current war.

One inevitable similarity between the wars, also on the home front, was and is the insistence of many patriotic Americans that we must never give up until our objectives are met, no matter the cost. Never again do they want to see a sight like the last helicopter pulling away from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.

We understand that sentiment. But, as history has shown, none of the Vietnam hawks' fears were realized. In fact, the dominoes soon began falling the other way.

We could fill this page with specific arguments for our positions on these referendums, but there's no need. Readers have heard them all before - for years now - and we're convinced that most of our minds have long since been made up. All that's left for now is to stuff that ballot into its envelope and send it off, hoping it will do some good.