A Study in Contrasts

On the one hand…

This week I flew up to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, for a chaplain training event that is held each year throughout the nation. On both the way up there, and the way back down, I amazed at how many people stopped me, and my chaplain assistant, and thanked us profusely for our service in the Army. One person even anonymously gave up his or her first class plane ticket so one of us could fly first class. Others simply walked up, looked us in the eyes, and said thank you. I feel completely unworthy of their thanks, but I realize it has nothing to do with me. What an incredible thing to see and receive this outpouring of support. There are so many people truly desiring to support our troops.

On the other hand…

On Thursday, the day after I got back, 24 people were arrested in Great Britain for planning and preparing to blow up 6-10 airplanes over the Atlantic on August 16th- next Wednesday. What a God-send that the British intelligence services, in conjunction with Pakistan and the US, broke this ring up. Countless lives were saved and the world was spared a horrific catastrophe. It shows that we are making great progress in the War On Terror. That much should be clear.

But less than one day later, Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee made a speech in which he accused George Bush of trying “scare” the American people, because of this recent terror bust. Huh? WHAT?? Uh, no Mr. Dean, it is not President Bush who is trying scare us. It is Al Qaeda, and the terrorists. They want us to be afraid. They want us to quit. They want us to give up on democracy and cut and run. They want to scare us.

Could the contrast be any clearer? The average American, in spite of what the polls say, supports our troops and want to see the US succeed.

With that said, I want to make a request, or maybe a pitch. For a moment, I’m going to step outside of my role as a pastor, and a chaplain. I’m going to speak just as a guy potentially going into a war zone. I want to speak politically for just a moment. I hope I can be forgiven for this digression, as I never speak about politics from the pulpit or in any official capacity. I sometimes hint at it in this blog, but now I want to say it directly: please vote Republican in the upcoming elections. Those of you who know me as a pastor and do not share my politics on this…I’m sure you can agree to disagree with me. :) But I believe it is of the utmost importance, if we desire to support our military, to vote for the party that will not let these deaths be in vain. We need to finish what we started.

Don’t let the politicians quit. Our soldiers won’t quit. We won't. We didn't leave our families behind for a year to simply decide to be cowards when the going got tough. Americans are not quitters and we are winning this war. Don’t believe what you hear in the media, and please, just for a moment, give President Bush the benefit of the doubt. Doesn’t he deserve to be cut just a little more slack than the terrorists we are fighting?

I feel bad about Joe Lieberman, the Democratic Senator from Connecticut, who lost his primary to a left wing, anti-war candiate. This was just 6 years after running for Vice President for theDemocrats. He lost because of his support for the war, and his support for Israel. He is a casualty of a Democratic Party that has been taken over by people like Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi. We need to elect more people like him, not get rid of them. And in these elections, the ones who are willing to stand up and fight this war to the finish are the Republicans. What happened to Democrats like Franklin Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy?

Enough of that. The good news is that we have an incredible number of people who are just hard working, patriotic Americans, outside of Washington, who really just want to do the right thing, and stick to the commitments we have made. Can we do that?