the other end of the stick

regardless of what you think of our troops in iraq or even the president for that matter, we have to stay in iraq. i don't like owning those words. and i definitely don't like the fact that there is a need for them to exist at all. i wish we could go back and rethink entering iraq, but the past is the past and can only be changed in so far as it is useful for informing a better future.

we have a responsibility to that country to stay and help (even if it doesn't seem like it is) them mete out a government infrastructure in place. it's probably better for them to see us still as infidels if it would cause them to see not shiite or sunni, but instead iraqis united for iraq.

one thing we don't do very well as americans is stick things out. meaning, things take longer than perhaps our initial gauge would have us believe. and so it is that though we tend to be as a country, future-oriented, it is immediate future orientation that has our attention until the next best thing rolls along and vies for it.

and so i posit to you, dear reader, that if we seek to bring longlasting freedom-bringing change we have to be able to be in it for the long haul if that's how long it takes. though let's pray for expediency and the curtailing of loss of life in the waiting period.