Lord, I try to be more grateful, but sometimes it is hard. I have a tendency to be grateful to a point and then whiny and complaining after that. My sister and Mom bought a pie for dessert last night from Marie Callendar's. I should have said, "MMM Pie..." and let it go at that. But sometimes I want more than just a gift, I want a specific gift. I want the gift I receive to be something extraordinary. And so I asked, "What kind of pie?" See, I'm an ungrateful bad person. And all along I was thinking to myself - Self, whatever she answers, be grateful... unless its something absolutely horrible like Blueberry pie. "Its Double Cream Blueberry," she answered. NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! That was not what I wanted. In fact, I knew that if I ate it, I'd probably be sick (blueberries and me do not have a good history - probably psychological, but still). I ended up having the best Chocolate Cake I've had in months, but I felt bad for being ungrateful for the initial gift.
We can't always get what we want. We have to live with that knowledge and we have to accept the gifts we do receive and learn to accept even the mistakes made on our behalf.
To be upfront, I am against the War in Iraq. I was against it at the beginning and I am against it now. We can sit here and cast blame around for how we got into the Iraq war, but the truth of the matter is, no matter how much support we gave the war to start, the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of our Commander In Chief, who sent in the troops. He is not souly to blame, but, as the saying goes, the buck stops with him. To have him turn around and blame the intelligence community for getting us into the war shows a clear lack of understanding of his role as President of the United States. The intelligence community says, "There is smoke over that hill." The analysts say, "It could be enemy troops." The wise President says, "Let's go investigate until we know its not a trap." The bad President says, "Let's charge over the hill and attack." We charged before we knew what the smoke was. To then turn around and say that it was the intelligence communities fault is to admit that you don't know what your role is in the grand scheme of things. Or, you do know what your role is, but you did it anyway and then blamed the intelligence community for your own faulty decisions. Invading Iraq had reprecussions and so far, we've done little to handle them.
That's neither here nor there. The fact of the matter is, we are ensconced in a war of our making and there is no easy way out of the war. We have blown things up, killed thousands of soldiers, and basically disrupted an entire country. We have also planted a seed of hope in rocky soil. The weeds of terrorism are trying to choke that seed to death, and unless the seed is transplanted, it will die. There are reprecussions to that decision as well. The truth of the matter is, no matter how much we want to get out of Iraq, that is exactly the wrong decision at this time.
I do not support the President. He got us into this war foolishly. But, at the same time, I think we are taking the wrong approach in Iraq. The war is, at this moment, another Vietnam. And we, at this moment, are a nation that has grown weary of the toll and sacrifice of this war. But the answer is not to leave Iraq.
No, much as I hate to admit it, the answer is to throw everything we've got at Iraq. The things that make America great are many, but one of the biggest is our unswerving loyalty to those nations seeking liberty. Vietnam was a different animal in that respect because we entered the country under a false theory - trying to stop the advancement of the communist ideology. But communism can't ever succeed. So, when we pulled out of Vietnam, it was bad for a short time, but eventually Vietnam began to realize that it couldn't thrive as a communist nation. Its still communist, of course, but the capitalist reforms in that country are on par with those in China. Only North Korea continues to stick to the strict Cold War theory of communism and it is completely isolated from the rest of the world. We succeeded in Vietnam by departing. That same approach will not work in Iraq. To succeed in Iraq, we must win and win convincingly.
We must prove to the world that no petty group of thugs can stop the mightiest nation of the world. We must prove that, God Willing, we can bring peace and prosperity to any nation that asks it from us. This isn't the reason we went into Iraq, but it must be the reason that we stay.
We need to send more troops, better weapons, and build a new coalition of nations to bring about change in Iraq. We must enlist the aid of regional partners in these changes. We must be a leader of peace and freedom. And we must eliminate any threats to that peace and freedom.
This is not a Republican thing. This is not a Democratic thing. This is an American thing. Our pride is wounded. Mistakes have been made. But the people of Iraq deserve to live in a world of peace and freedom just as much as we do. And we need to show the world that we can not be pushed around.
So, I'm not for the War in Iraq. I'd be perfectly happy if they brought the troops home tomorrow. However, I'm willing to support the war if we really make an effort to win it. If not, then we are wasting our time and our efforts and our lives for nothing more than political expediency. And only a foolish President would do that.
We can't always get what we want. Sometimes, we have to embrace the bad in order to find the good.
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