Where we came from and where we are going

Joy has been safe in Kuwait about a week now. I am not sure how much longer she'll be there. She can't communicate for safety reasons exactly when her unit travels. This is not the first time that my wife has been gone. In the four and a half years that she has been in the army, she has been somewhere else from Aaron and me for nearly two years of that. Sometimes we got to visit and sometimes we didn't, but this time the stakes are a bit higher because she is in harms way. I pray daily for her safety and the safety for all our troops that are around the world.

It's easy to watch the news these days and jump on the bandwagon of cynicism and anger regarding the situation in Iraq. The pundits and prognosticators have no shortage of fodder for their endless debate on whether or not we should be there any longer, or whether we should have gone in the first place. I majored in History and Psychology in college. One of things that I strongly believe from a combination of of my studies and fearing the Lord is that I am proud of our heritage as Americans. I am glad that this nation was founded on Christian principles and that our forefathers fought for the freedoms that I enjoy today. It is my sincere belief that while our reasons for going to Iraq in the first place may have been misguided, it is our duty to finish what we started. The Iraqis deserve the same opportunity to be a people free from oppression and tyranny that we enjoy every day. It would be tragic to turn our backs on our new-found allies at this point. I would much rather that my wife return home tomorrow, but that is not what I pray for. I pray that God's will be done in Iraq and that his wisdom would move among the Iraqi people and government so that my wife and all our troops can come home proud of a job well done. So if I had a word for the President and Congress it would be this:

Stop arguing about troop levels and timetables and all this other nonsense and start developing a plan where we can bring the very best that we have to offer to the Iraqi people and government . We need to build a plan for success for this generation and the generations to come.

I think that in the bigger picture, the outcome of the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan will dictate the precedent for what freedom looks like in the future. I know that in the years to come incidents like that of 9/11 and mass transit bombings and other acts of terror will not cease on their own. So ultimately I think that one of two things will happen. Either we will grow into a society that decides that the opportunity costs of fighting terrorism are too great and therefore we will accept terror attacks when they happen around the world, or we will continue to maintain the stance that freedom is more important, whether or not the attacks happen on American soil or not.

I think that I will leave my opinions at that for now. I could go on about how disturbing the Iranian involvement in the Middle East is or many other related topics but I hope that my point is clear. If we don't shoulder the responsibility for promoting peace and stability in the Middle East and win the rest of the world for that cause, it is a scary legacy to leave for our children. If we forget that it wasn't without pain, or blood, or adversity, or civil war that we enjoy our freedoms today, we grow in danger of forfeiting those freedoms. If we didn't have other countries that believed in our cause for independence and got involved, the American Revolution would be a much different chapter in our history books today.