Please Stay the Course

Less we forget ... It took us some initial twenty years to hewn out our very own constitution, our federation, our representational democracy, and our governance.

Our In God We Trust.

We did it with very much loss of life, and many tears from within and without of our embryonic and then growing infant Country.

During those formidable climactic times, how many a mother, father, wives, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles -- from Europe, Boston, New York, Virginia, and elsewhere, must have thought with deeply painful emotion, the same, as we are now so indelibly feeling and thinking.

Please give the Iraqi's the continuing support; the time, and the understanding that they so very much need, in order that the sacrifices here at home, at our hearths, and in our beds, are worth the death, injury, broken hearts, dreams and tears of all the families, Iraqi, and American, who have sacrificed all, and invested all for the birth of this now newest of nations.

We are, for better or for worse, well into it; and deeply and intimately involved; and the responsible agent of change; and as such we can not, and must not leave their sides now.

It is good and necessary work, but not easy, nor nice or neat, that we stay this current course. It is therefore imperative that we, as Americans clearly understand the course we are on. Clarity is not unpatriotic, nor is a desire for peace. But peace has never come without enduring sacrifice, eternal vigilance, and clarity of purpose.

History has shown that this course to Liberty and Peace can not be achieved by a hidden strategy of serendipity and surprise, yet at the same time we obviously can not give the enemy due dates to make their sustaining counter-productive dispassionate plans. While we can therefore not ask for days and dates yet, we can ask for, and must insist on clear goals, and transparent measures of what success is.

“When they stand up, we will stand down”… is indeed a good sound bite, but it is not a meal. While we must, and do, and will, continue to fully support our troops winning in Iraq, and elsewhere, as they too, stand and die for liberty, we owe them a true measure of accountability, and a common picture of understanding of what it is we are now seeking. In this way we will all recognize it when we see it, and cheer it in unison and relief, when we have achieved it.

There is seemingly this current ever permeating and pervasive, yet quietly held suspicion by the citizens, that our leaders may be less that of admirable prophets and strategists of success on any issue, but rather suffering from, as Ralph Waldo Emerson so succinctly stated, way back in 1841, that: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

This burdensome ubiquitous social sense of impending doom, while increasing our anxiety, and permeating every aspect of the new millennium, is sadly never addressed by our current leaders, who have appropriated it, while simultaneously it is intentionally, destructively and unhesitantly used, or at minimum implied, by their philosphical oppositions, at every convenient or inconvenient opportunity.

Both sides appearing to care more about their Puckish personal winning and positioning, at any cost, rather than they do, about our winning and sacred unity and progress as a nation.

Their mutual illusory personal mistakes of not respectfully speaking to/with us, nor therefore contributing to our necessary sense of social confidence, and moral purpose, is what makes them increasingly less believable, less trustworthy, and more outside of us, as everyday folks, just trying to get by.

This is not a time to destructively divide on blood red emotions and suspicious motivations, but rather to unify our hearts, as a country of citizens, who support both their troops, and ourselves, as a nation, here at home.

Both in battle and in unifying plan, the glue of our American society, and our most intimate well being as individuals, is clearly at stake.

Together we can, we must, help a nation of people up another hard scrabble path to democracy and destiny. A well hewn path, we feel that we well know, and believe in with every bone in our constitutional bodies.

In so doing they, again, like so many before them, will teach us ... their teachers, the atmospheric importance of the gift of voting for one's personal and national destinies, that we have so sacrificed to give them, and ourselves, yet again.

For this is also about us, and not just about them. We are all brothers/sisters here in will. We will all be better for this -- there is little other choice -- we must insist, and be constant to achieve that promise of betterment, both here and abroad.

Then perhaps after this, for at least awhile, perhaps forever – we will not need to again draw guns, bullets and blood of our children for peace? It seems unlikely, but a worthy prayer. The prayer of a soldier, a citizen.

This struggle is not new to history, nor is the need for clear goals, and measures of success, and finality.

In God We Trust.