A Sunday to Sift

We were so pleased to have friends stay overnight. Typical of old times, we stayed up late catching up. We didn't run out of things to talk about, we just ran out of gas. Our friend, just back from Iraq where he did extremely hazardous duty in the streets of Baghdad [not his words, but my take on what he was doing], was very helpful at putting the current war in perspective. Two main points that I took away: [1] What he saw and the progress being made was not well reported at home, [2] pulling out before we've finished the job would be devastatingly bad all the way around. He enlightened me about the tribal nature of the sectarian violence. The best analogy we could reconstruct [in our freedom-addled minds] is that it's like Robert E. Lee of 100+ years ago, who saw being a Virginian above being an American and renounced his oath to join the Confederacy.

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Have you ever met a real life hero? I think there are moments of heroism in most lives where we sacrifice something for our fellow man. But our friend is a hero of uncommon valor. Bullets whizzed past him many many times. And he suited up and showed up for duty every day for over a year. He has a wonderful, heroic-in-her-own-way wife, and two fabulous kids. He had everything in the world to lose. And he did it anyway. I just cannot say enough good things about our soldier friend. We owe him more than we can repay in this life.