Making time

Work has been really busy lately - there's the pressure to get the numbers, which means the pressure to implement new strategies and keep up student contacts like before. I'm not complaining; in fact, this makes my days feel productive and go by quickly, but I haven't had much time to update! I have, however, been composing blog ideas in the car, so here are some things I've been thinking lately:

1. I really like country music now. Don't laugh, I know I was never a fan before moving here, but I've come to appreciate the generally wholesome messages. Last week, I made a point to keep track of the songs I heard on my way to work one morning, and all five mentioned God or church or prayer. Three of those songs held faith as a central point, and the other two were no less genuine in their references. I'm not saying the messages are always like that, but I've found most ounty songs tend focus on things like family and lifetime commitments rather than one-nighters and promiscuity.

2. Certain things are very satisfying, like the crashing sound the grocery cart makes when you roll it into the parking lot's cart corral. Or spraying the dirt off a filthy white car. Or sipping a cup of hot chocolate.

3. We're looking for a house! We actually found one we like, but our first visit was with a really crappy realtor, so we're going back with a different one tomorrow. Things we like best: it's about five miles out of town with an acre and a half, plus the option to buy more; it has cathedral ceilings in the living room and an open floor plan, so the living room, kitchen and dining area are all together; it has a half-finished walk-out basement; it has real wood floors in the kitchen and beautiful cabinets; and it has a wraparound porch on three sides of the house. I'll write more after our second trip out there.

I think that's all I have time to write today. I have to run over to the Alumni House now and grab some more kilts so I have enough for the OCs to wear in their welcome video; then I have to continue writing content for the new accepted student Internet portal, plus write the letters/emails we'll use to communicate their new access; then I have to take time to talk to a family, send out an email blast about the upcoming theatre performance, put together another email blast about the upcoming music performances, and pack my materials up for tonight's college fair in Birmingham. And I have until 3 pm to take care of all of that, plus whatever pops up in the meantime. Have I mentioned I really like my job, because I do!

To love, honor and cherish...

Marriage is NOT dead!

(Sorry Ryan, I've totally hijacked Townhall.com from you. It's just so good!)

Winter is HERE!

I just thought I'd share that, in case anyone missed it. Here are my personal top five reasons I know it's winter:

5. It's not just nice anymore - but essential - that Mitch starts my car in the morning.
4. It takes me as long to pick out a hat, scarf and mitten ensemble as it does to choose my clothes. (And I wear my hair down more often because it looks good under a hat that way!)
3. No one at works likes me anymore, because I've been not-so-secretly hoping for this weather and they all hate it.
2. I start planning out the logistics of waxing my skis in our kitchen.
1. We have to tack fleece blankets up over the bedroom windows so I don't spend every night glued to Mitch in an effort to keep warm.

Happy Winter everyone!

The Cruise Post

Title: My New Years Cruise

Cast of Characters:

Me, patient keeper of three boys
Mitch, the loving husband/part-time wingman
Bobby, my brother/paradoxically shy party-guy



Brian, the high school friend/fully committed wingman
Mom, my female relief from our testosterone-filled stateroom
Dad, the instigator
Grandpa, the independent octiginarian
Mark, Cheryl, Matt and Scott, the hometown family playing supporting roles



Yadi, our amazing steward
Barlaam and Jesus, our entertaining, attentive waiters



Ali, Bobby's weeklong kissy-face partner
Jess, Brian's island love

Setting the Stage: The Ship, Carnival Triumph

In total, we spent four whole days on a floating city, traveling from Miami to the Virgin Islands and back again. We spent a good amount of time up on the sunny, windy deck, but as I'm not particularly fond of laying out and burning, I hung out in the shade with a book most of the time. We ate a lot of ice cream and pizza (available 24 hours a day) as well as delicious dinners and fantastic desserts. I had my first escargot experience: chewy garlicky goodness! Mitch ordered two dinners on most nights; he'd try something new and order steak as a backup. Generally, he polished off both! After our late dinners, we attended variety shows in the Rome Lounge featuring dancers, a juggler, a comedian, a magician, and way too much of our talkative cruise director. We barely touched the lavish casino, but when we did, I won $2 in nickels. And the bars, oh the bars: nightly rituals for the boys, but a one-time thing for lightweight Laurie, whose New Years Eve was a bit more than she could handle...



At least Bobby met Ali, a nice girl with whom he could spend his evenings once the old married couple went off to bed:



And Brian probably would have had similar luck, except that he got sick halfway through the trip, effectively shutting down his mission.

Act One: San Juan

After two days on the ship, we made landfall in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was imperative that we find a bar in which to watch the University of Michigan lose to USC, so we ended up in a hole in the wall place called Douglas' Bar. Here's a picture of pretty much the whole place:



When it was apparent that the second half of the game would go no better for U of M fans, Mitch, Bobby, Brian and I explored a fort in San Juan while the others went back to the ship. Here's the type of awesome picture my camera is capable of taking:



Act Two: St. Thomas

Cruising through the night, we arrived at St. Thomas immediately following our evening in San Juan, and it was as beautiful as I remember from previous trips. Mom, Dad and Grandpa rode the loud, powerful "Sea Blaster" out on a snorkeling excursion, but the boys and I chose the more graceful Castaway Girl, a large catamaran, for our ride to Buck Island for some underwater adventures. You wouldn't expect to see much in sixty feet of water, but we saw a shipwreck, a sea turtle named Steve, and all sorts of other creatures, a couple of which our tour guide, Jess, brought to the surface for us to hold. A wholesome, educational experience, until the rum punch surfaced on the hour-long trip back to port. By this time, Brian was hopelessly in love with Jess...



She offered him and Bobby a place on her couch if they would like to stay on the island, and though it meant leaving a little piece of himself in St. Thomas, Brian returned to the ship with us. Having done its damage, the rum punch stayed with all three boys as they attempted (semi-successfully) to dress for dinner. Three strikes for Bobby: he forgot to put on underwear, we knocked an empty wine glass off the table and shattered it, and he couldn't articulate his order to Barlaam, relying instead on the old menu-point trick. Oh, and I almost forgot: good push!



Act Three: St. Maarten

Oh, Can-a-da! Here we raced the Canadian America's Cup sailboat, True North IV, and whooped on the American boat, Stars and Stripes. The crew truly puts everyone to work on this excursion: I worked a winch in the back with Dad, Mom trimmed the mainsheet, Bobby and Mitch were grinders, and Grandpa timed the start of the race. It was exhilarating: we sailed so fast! I got soaked when I was on the low side and we dipped the rails, and when I was on the high side, I was so high I was virtually standing up! Hands down the best experience of the whole trip.



Brian, unfortunately, was back in our stateroom, alternating between hugging and straddling the toilet due to (we think) a nasty case of food poisoning.

Afterward: Our Return to Reality

Now we're back in Michigan, with our noses to grindstone. We've returned to work, are getting back in shape after all that cruise food, and planning for a wonderful winter that will include volleyball league, a renewed small group with church, ski trips to Crystal Mountain and maybe Searchmont (if it ever snows), possibly church membership, possibly house hunting, the GMAT for both of us when the tax return comes in, and many more fun experiences with family and friends!

(To see all the photos from our trip, go to http://photos.yahoo.com/skibunny11282 and look for the album titled "Cruise.")

Cruise!

Early tomorrow morning, we'll leave for our Caribbean cruise! It will be a great way to ring in the New Year, and I'll post all about it (and include pictures, too) when I get back. In the meantime, Happy New Year!

The Christmas Post

What stood out this year:

1. Spending quality time with Mitch's family, including his sister, Christa and her husband, Brian, with whom we don't get to individually bond very much.

2. Seeing my cousin's wife, Jessica, and her son, Giovanni (or "Bubba") at our family Christmas celebration. Though my cousin, Joe, is has a serious a recurring drug problem and she's threatened to leave him (as well she should, given his past behavior), she still embraces our entire family and comes to all possible events. Joe's currently in rehab and I'm praying that this time, Joe is really committed to turning his life around for his son and wife.

3. Watching my Papa walk like a champ after his recent knee-replacement surgery.

4. Being able to spend Christmas morning with my Grandpa Eccles. This is our first Christmas without Grandma, and I know he misses her more than I can imagine. (Isn't it a paradox how we want to hold on to memories of loved ones so they live on in our hearts, yet those memories hurt so much to recall because we miss them so much?)

5. Talking to my cousins from Arizona, Todd and Ryan, and learning all about Ryan's son, Landon. Though Landon was spending the holidays with his mother, we'll meet him next year "when he's old enough to actually remember Christmas," as Ryan puts it.

6. Not opening presents with my dad's side of the family, because we bought gifts for children in Detroit instead.

7. Watching Chip open and play with his new gift: a "Boogie Mat" filled with catnip!

Now we're getting ready for our cruise - countdown is four days, I can't believe it! I hope everyone had a merry, memorable Christmas!

Another "killin' time" blog

T-minus thirteen minutes 'til my week ends, and I get a nice four days off. In case anyone is curious, here's how I'll be spending the holidays:

Dec. 23 - DeYoung family Christmas
Dec. 24 - McGrath family Christmas (my mom's side)
Dec. 25 - Eccles family Christmas
Dec. 26-29 - Working the Community Appreciation Days that everyone else has off, so I only have to take half a vacation day for...

THE CRUISE! Dec. 30-Jan. 6 I'll be basking on a cruise ship in the Easter Caribbean with Mitch, Bobby, a friend from high school, my parents, my grandpa and another family from my hometown. We're stopping in San Juan (maybe doing a biolumanescent kayak tour there), St. Maarten (sailing on retired America's Cup sailboats there) and St. Thomas (probably snorkeling there), and spending the rest of the week aboard the ship. It's our Christmas present from my parents, and it's something my mom's been counting down to for a very long time.

Nine minutes left, but I was just informed that everyone was going home, so I think I'll sign off for now. Merry Christmas to all!

Seriously...

What will they ban next?

Do people really have sex in the woods?

According to Skiing Magazine's Dr. Flake:

"Yes, people do. Or did, that is. It all goes back to the 1960s and '70s when hotdog skiers discovered nothing could chill out a hot dog better than a cold snog. At the height of the free-love rut, there were reportedly more people in the bush than there were drinking Colorado Kool-Aid in the lodge. Alas, all this intercourse led to pregnancies and a generation of kids named after resorts, like Jackson and Bridger, or specific parts of resorts, like Flake's nephew Behindthewarminghut. Anyway, the introduction on the condom to ski towns sometime around 2003 changed the dynamic forever. Now nobody gets it on - you just can't open a blister pack with gloves on."

I hope someone else gets as much of a kick out of this as I did! Happy Ski Season (once Michigan gets some more snow)!

Haha!

Robin, thanks for your comment! The funny thing is that Mitch recently upgraded from a single, basic multi-tool for bike repair to an entire kit! Oh my goodness, what a downward spiral we're caught in!

Sports Observation

So you decide you want to start mountain biking. You buy a bike and a helmet, thinking, This is all I'll ever need. What an easy sport to get into.

Pretty soon you buy a state park sticker, because paying for daily passes gets too expensive and when you ride in, you don't get the convenience of the trailhead. You get some blisters, so you think gloves might be a good idea. Wow, this is great! I'll never ride barehanded again!

You secretly laugh at all the people decked out in their goofy padded shorts, until someone suggests you try them. All of a sudden, you can sit down and pedal over rough spots without severely bruising your buttbones. I'll never ride without bike shorts again!

Then you watch all these people killing you on hills with these fancy shoes that let them pull up and push down on the pedals. Cool, you think. So you buy clipless pedals and the necessary shoes, and voila! So that's how they do it!

A Camelback for hydration, non-cotton clothing (including socks) to wick the sweat away, glasses to keep the branches and mud out of your face, upgrades to your components...then you decide it's time for a new bike, because you've found the limitations of your "starter bike." Still, as with everything else you've invested in this sport, you're hesitant. Can it really make that much difference? Then you suck it up and spend your whole "spending money savings" on it, and the first ride is amazing.

Does this ever stop, or will I be finding new things I can't bike without for the rest of my life?!?!?

*Scowl*

Sometimes I hate being the nice one. Buttface co-workers rescheduled our after-travel celebration because another rep couldn't make it tonight, even though I told them I couldn't come on the new evening. And I told them it was OK. I was really excited about it, too...

Supermom

I really don't know how my mom does it. She's the most selfless, amazing woman I know. She works all day as an operating room nurse, and when she comes home, she doesn't relax on the couch and pick up a book, like I tend to do: she makes a wholesome, homemade dinner. My dad often helps, especially with grilling, but she rarely asks him to help. She sees something that needs to be done and she does it. She puts everyone else's needs before her own. I look at the last piece of candy and my first instinct is to eat it myself, but hers is to offer it to someone else.

Is this from years of practice, or is she really closer to deserving her "St. Joan" nickname than any of us realize? Lately, I find myself asking, "What would Mom do?" Mom wouldn't ask her husband to go out in the cold and turn off the Christmas lights - she'd do it. She'd offer to make lunch, not just suggest it was time for lunch. She is the wife and mother I want to be!

The Good Old Days

Commence "Old Lady in Rocking Chair" mode:

I remember the good old days when the Alma College climbing wall was a place with routes for all abilities; a place where the best climbers honed their skills and set routes to help others develop theirs; a place where technical routes were more plentiful than look-at-this-big-move-I'm-such-a-badass routes.

Ah, the good old days...

Snow!

I just want everyone to know that I love the snow we have right now! I love that's it's so cold in the morning, I don't want to get out of bed and Mitch has to start my car early for me. I love that I have motivation to do something other than put my hair in a ponytail: winter hats look much cuter with my hair down! I love that I can't wear my heels into work; instead, I have to wear my trail shoes, negotiate the slippery parking lot, and then change my shoes.

Did I mention I love winter? And Christmas? In the next few weeks, I'll do some of my favorite things of the whole year, like setting up my real Christmas tree, baking Christmas cookies, and wrapping gifts for my family and friends. I'll listen to Nat King Cole croon Christmas carols, and reminisce about past performances while the Nutcracker plays in the background. And I'll soak up the holiday cheer every chance I get.

Talking to God

Here's what I've been praying about recently:

-Thanking God for my wonderful husband and the refreshing anniversary trip to Northern Michigan we took at the beginning of the week.

-Praying the he watches over Bruce and brings him home safely.

-Praying that Alexis, a boy from the Dominican Republic for whom we are committed to praying for a year, is healthy and that his father overcomes alcoholism.

-Significant others of some of my high school friends are having a hard time with faith: one has decided, after being a Christian for quite awhile, that he doesn't believe anymore, so I pray he will find his way back and that his wife can stay strong in her own beliefs and not blindly agree with him. Another has never been a Christian, but his girlfriend is trying to help him, so I pray he will discover the joy of faith and that she can be patient with him.

-Always thanking God for all my wonderful family and friends, who bring such joy into my life.

Wow...

...my blog has become a forum for such a deep discussion topic! Never thought I could write something to make people work through their own thoughts and pose their own questions on a blog called "That Girl is a Cowboy." Yeah!


Sorry guys, I have nothing deep to add at this time. But I am in the midst of a fun couple of days:

Tuesday: I finished travel, but had to spend my first night back alone as Mitch was at his parents', preparing for Opening Day.

Wednesday: I worked while Mitch sat in the woods and watched deer, but didn't shoot any. He'll be going back out a few more times, and I'm looking forward to a winter of venison! After dinner, we drove to Traverse City for a night at the Hampton Inn, courtesy of Mitch's work.

Thursday (today): Mitch is at a class for work (that's why we're in TC) and I'm killing time until the mall opens and I can begin my Christmas shopping. He'll be done with his class at noon, and then we'll probably visit some wineries.

Friday: Back to work for both of us, but after work, we'll head down to Grand Rapids for a Jars of Clay concert with Jenn and her boyfriend, James. Sleepover!

Saturday: We'll hang out with Bobby and maybe do some climbing at Higher Ground, but we have to be back in Mt. Pleasant for that big football game...who's playing again...? Adrienne will also be coming over after her physical therapy conference in Midland to stay the night and hang out on Sunday.

I'm so glad to be back to my real life!

Thanks :)

Thanks Tim, Jenn, Robin, and anyone else who read my last post and put some thought into the concept of Christian love. Mostly, I already knew everything you all wrote, I was just having one of those moments where I was overwhelmed by the whole concept of trying to love everyone as Christ loved us. All three of you helped me remember that yes, it is overwhelming and will always be so, but that I can keep striving for an ideal because God is (and all of you, my Christian friends, are) there to support me and pick me up when I stumble. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Jenn, I can't wait to see you on Friday! I'll be calling you soon, if you haven't heard from me by the time you read this! :)

Thoughts on Love

Mitch and I have been attending a small group through our church for the past month, and while I'm pretty much enjoying it, I'm not really on board with some of the content. We're doing this "40 Days of Communty" thing put together by Rick Warren, and last week it was all about love, and why Christians need to love each other, and what God (or Rick?) means by love.

Basically, Rick takes the statements from Corinthians and puts forth that love must have all these components (love protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres) to be real Christian love.

I think that's asking a bit much. I have some relationships that definitely fit that definition of love: with Mitch, my parents, my brother, some other family members, and some of my friends. But as Christians, we're supposed to "love" everyone, and I don't see it very feasible to protect, trust, hope with, and persevere with everyone.

I like C.S. Lewis's definition of Christian love a lot better: to wish good for all people. According to Lewis, I don't have to feel fond of people (and why would I necessarily trust, protect, hope and persevere with those of whom I am not fond?) but I do have to wish for their good.

That, to me, makes a lot more realistic sense. I'm not saying I don't want relationships with people that involve protection, trust, hope and perseverance - or that I shouldn't try to build new relationships that emboy those qualities - but I don't think there's any way I can have that with everyone. I can, however, try to swallow feelings of annoyance or disapproval or whatever and sincerely wish good for everyone.

I don't know if that made sense, but it's been on my mind and I wanted to put it out there.

On Election Day...

I heard about this article listening to AM760 this morning, and thought I'd read it for myself. It's so great, I thought I'd post it for everyone. I added the bold formatting to statements that really resonated with me, but the whole thing is great and ties the majority of the Middle East conflicts together in a way I've never heard before.

The Only Issue This Election Day

By Orson Scott Card

There is only one issue in this election that will matter five or ten years from now, and that's the War on Terror.

And the success of the War on Terror now teeters on the fulcrum of this election.

If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will be one.

Unfortunately, the opposite is not the case -- if the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the outcome of the present war will be favorable for us or anyone else.

But at least there will be a chance.

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations.

But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war. And since the Democratic Party seems hellbent on losing it -- and in the most damaging possible way -- I have no choice but to advocate that my party be kept from getting its hands on the reins of national power, until it proves itself once again to be capable of recognizing our core national interests instead of its own temporary partisan advantages.

To all intents and purposes, when the Democratic Party jettisoned Joseph Lieberman over the issue of his support of this war, they kicked me out as well. The party of Harry Truman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- the party I joined back in the 1970s -- is dead. Of suicide.

The "War on Terror"

I recently read an opinion piece in which the author ridiculed the very concept of a "war on terror," saying that it makes as much sense as if, after Pearl Harbor, FDR had declared a "war on aviation."

Without belaboring the obvious shortcomings of the analogy, I will agree with the central premise. The name "war on terror" clearly conceals the fact that we are really at war with specific groups and specific nations; we can no more make war on a methodology than we can make war on nitrogen.

However, there are several excellent reasons why "War on Terror" is the only possible name for this war.

1. This is not a war that can be named for any particular nation or region. To call it "The Iraq War" or the "Afghanistan War" would lead to the horrible mistake of thinking that victory would consist of toppling certain governments and then going home.

In fact, it is precisely the name "War in Iraq" that is leading to the deep misconceptions that drive the Democratic position on the war. If this were in fact a war on Iraq, then in one sense we won precisely when President Bush declared victory right after we occupied Baghdad. And in another sense, we might not see victory for another five years, or even a decade -- a decade in which Americans will be dying alongside Iraqis. For a "War in Iraq" to linger this way is almost too painful to contemplate.

But we are not waging a "War in Iraq." We are waging a world war, in which the campaigns to topple the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan were brilliantly successful, and the current "lukewarm" war demands great patience and determination from the American people as we ready ourselves for the next phase.

2. We cannot name this war for our actual enemies, either, because there is no way to name them accurately without including some form of the word "Islam" or "Muslim."

It is our enemies who want to identify this as a war between Islam and the West. If we allow this to happen, we run the risk of achieving the worst of all possible outcomes: The unification of one or both of the great factions of worldwide Islam under a single banner.

President Bush and his administration have shown their grasp of our present danger by stoutly resisting all attempts to rename this war. We call it a "War on Terror" because that allows us to cast it, not as a war against the Muslim people, with all their frustrations and hopes, but a war in which most Muslims are not our enemies at all.

That can be galling for many Americans. When, after the fall of the towers on 9/11, Palestinians and others poured into the streets, rejoicing, it was tempting to say, A plague on all of them!

But it is precisely those people -- the common people of the Muslim world, most of whom hate us (or claim to hate us, when asked by pollsters in police states) -- whom we must treat as if they were not our enemies. They are the ones we must win over for us to have any hope of victory without a bloodbath poured out on most of the nations of the world.

Nation Building

Another charge against the Bush administration's conduct of the war is that they are engaged in the hopeless task of "nation-building." And this is true -- except for the word "hopeless."

But what is the alternative? I've heard several, each more disastrous and impossible and even shameful than the one before.

In the New Testament, Jesus once used the analogy of a person who was possessed by a devil. When you cast out the devil, don't you leave an empty house, swept clean, to which seven devils will now come to live, making things worse than ever?

No matter which miserable dictatorship we moved against after the Taliban -- and we had no choice but to keep moving on if we were to eradicate the grave danger we faced (and face) -- we would have faced the same problem in Syria or Iraq or Sudan that we had in Afghanistan: We had to establish order in a nation that had never actually become a nation.

The boundaries on the ground in the Middle East were not formed in the traditional way -- by compromise or war. Instead, European powers drew lines that pleased their fancy. The lines did not create the hatreds that plague the region, but they guaranteed that traditional enemies would have to face each other within these boundaries.

It is in part because of the resulting chaos and oppression that groups like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and the Shiite fundamentalists of Iran have been given an opportunity to offer the solution of returning to the core values of Islam -- as defined, of course, to their private advantage.

If we topple one government and then walk away, the result in any Middle Eastern nation would be civil war, and the probable winner would be the well-funded international terrorist groups that do not shrink from wholesale murder in pursuing their cause.

Just as Kerensky's attempt at a liberal government in revolutionary Russia was almost instantly snuffed out by Lenin's Bolshevik thugs in 1917, so also would any attempt at unified democratic government in Iraq, Iran, Syria, or Afghanistan be quickly converted into Islamo-fascism of one stripe or another.

And if that happened, Islamicist puritanism would be seen in every nation as the "wave of the future." Just as, when Nazi Germany was in the ascendant, the nations of southeastern Europe quickly made their accommodation with Hitler, since the alternative was to be swept away like Poland, France, or Yugoslavia, so also would nominally democratic nations adopt the trappings of Islamicism -- if they weren't already toppled by puritan revolutions from within.

Democracy -- the Other Hope

Wherever Islamicism has been tried, the result has been identical to Communism's miserable track record. The people are oppressed; the worst sort of vigilantes and thugs terrorize the population; the new power elite, regardless of their supposed piety and dedication to a holy cause, is quickly corrupted and comes to love the wealth and privileges of power.

When there is no hope of deliverance, the people have no choice but to bow under the tyrant's lash, pretending to be true believers while yearning for relief. In Russia it came ... after more than seventy years. China and Cuba are still waiting -- but then, they started later.

So it would be in the Muslim world -- if Islamicism were ever able to come to seem inevitable and irresistible.

You know: If America withdrew from Iraq and Afghanistan and exposed everyone who had cooperated with us to reprisals.

As happened in South Vietnam. The negotiated peace was more or less holding after American withdrawal. But then a Democratic Congress refused to authorize any further support for the South Vietnamese government. No more armaments. No more budget.

In other words, we forcibly disarmed our allies, while their enemies continued to be supplied by the great Communist powers. The message was clear: Those who rely on America are fools. We didn't even have the decency to arrange for the evacuation of the people who had trusted us and risked the most in supporting what they thought was our mutual cause.

We did it again, this time in the Muslim world, in 1991, when Bush Senior encouraged a revolt against Saddam. He meant for the senior military officers to get rid of him in a coup; instead, the common people in the Shiite south rose up against Saddam.

Bush Senior did nothing as Saddam moved in and slaughtered them. The tragedy is that all it would have taken is a show of force on our part in support of the rebels, and Saddam's officers would have toppled him. Only when it became clear that we would do nothing did it become impossible for any high-ranking officials to take action. For the price of the relatively easy military action that would have made Saddam turn his troops around and leave the Shiite south, we could have gotten rid of him then -- and had grateful friends, perhaps, in the Shiite south.

That is part of our track record: Two times we persuaded people to commit themselves to action against oppressive enemies, only to abandon them. Do you think that would-be rebels in Iran and Syria and North Korea don't remember those lessons?

Fortunately, there are other lessons as well: West Germany and Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, where liberated nations were protected. In the first two, we took on the task of nation building and transformed both political cultures into democracies. In the latter two, we tolerated strongman dictatorships for many years, but eventually we made it clear that it was time for democracy, and under our protective umbrella, the governments were transformed and oppression ended.

So ... which America is operating now in the Muslim world?

In Iraq and Afghanistan -- but especially Iraq -- President Bush is behaving according to America's best and most honorable tradition. We did not come to destroy, we came to liberate and rescue, he says -- by word and deed. We bring freedom and opportunity. Our money will help rebuild your devastated (or never built-up) economies; our expertise will help train your most talented people to be ready for prosperity and self-government; and our military will keep enemies from overwhelming you as you reinvent yourselves.

Instead of leaving an empty house, swept clean but unprotected, waiting for the devils of Islamic puritanism to come take over, President Bush has sworn that America will bring democracy, and that American soldiers will do their best to protect the decent, ordinary people until they are able to protect themselves.

The Competing Stories

Here's the story the Islamic puritans are telling: The West is full of terrible evils -- atheism, sexual filth of all kinds -- in defiance of God's will. So seductive are the wiles of Shaitan that many Muslims aspire to dress, act, and live like westerners. Only by turning to full enforcement of ancient Muslim law can Islam purify itself and resist the blandishments of the west. It's evil on one side, God on the other.

If all we had to answer them was Hollywood movies, politically correct anti-religious dogmas, and the other trappings of a West that is almost as decadent as the Islamicists claim, then we would only prove their point.

Instead, President Bush has offered something quite different. We don't want to turn you into mini-Americas, he says. We offer you, instead, democracy, in which you can choose for yourselves what parts of western culture to adopt. You will govern yourselves. It isn't a choice between wickedness and righteousness, it's a choice between freedom and oppression.

In other words, through nation-building, through the promise of democracy, Bush has created a rallying point with far stronger resonance than anything the Islamic puritans have to offer.

What is their program, after all? We'll take your sons and get them to blow themselves up in order to murder westerners! Forget the rhetoric -- Muslim parents are human beings, and there is nothing more devastating than to lose a child. The only consolation is when it seems to be in a noble cause. But because of President Bush's promise of democracy, the Muslim puritan cause does not seem noble to more and more Muslims.

Even if they live in countries (or neighborhoods) where they dare not speak up -- yet -- they do not want any of their children to die just so that the rest of them can live and suffer in slavery to a privileged, selfish class of elitist tyrants.

President Bush's story offers the common people hope of living decent lives and seeing their children live to adulthood, to grow old surrounded by grandchildren.

The Al-Qaeda, Ayatollah story promises them dead children and the lash.

There are, of course, fanatics who will embrace Islamic terrorism because they choose to blind themselves to the truth and embrace the noble-seeming lies of the tyrants. Al-Qaeda does not lack for recruits.

But it also does not lack for people who fear and hate them. There are few pro-Al-Qaeda demonstrations on the Arab street. The people remember the images of liberated Iraqis tearing down the images of Saddam. And they know -- because they have relatives and friends, they hear from merchants and travelers -- that in most of Iraq, there is freedom and prosperity like never before.

They're getting the story, at the level of gossip and personal anecdote, that the anti-American media -- you know, Al-Jazirah and the New York Times -- never report: The Americans really mean to give the Iraqis self-government.

You hear about the power outages in Iraq and it's always somehow Bush's fault. What nobody points out is that these outages come in places where Saddam barely offered electricity at all. The reason the new power systems can't cope is because the newly prosperous Iraqi people are buying -- and plugging in -- vast quantities of electrical appliances they could never afford to buy before! When a town that used to have two dozen refrigerators and washing machines now has two thousand of each, the old power supply is never going to do the job.

"Americans Won't Stay"

How do the Islamicist tyrants answer the obvious success and growing appeal of Bush's democracy program?

They kill people, of course.

But they also tell the story, over and over: "America will never stick it out. We'll keep killing Americans till they give up and go away, and then you will answer to us!"

Until they believe that the Islamofascists are never coming into power, many people will remain afraid to commit themselves to democracy.

Under those circumstances, the remarkable thing is how courageously the Shiites of the south have embraced democracy, and how many of them are beginning to trust that we mean what they say.

But against Bush's promises and the actions of our brave and decent soldiers, the tyrants can set the behavior of Bush's political opponents, who are doing their best to promote the propaganda of the tyrants. Every Congressman who says "We must set a timetable for departure" is providing ammunition to the tyrants in their campaign of terror.

Because even more than they fear terrorist bombs, the pro-democracy forces within Iraq and Afghanistan fear American withdrawal. Every speech threatening withdrawal is a bomb going off in Baghdad, killing, not people, but the will to resist the tyrants.

Bin Laden predicted it. The Democratic Party in America is following his script exactly.

Can We Win?

That is certainly not what most who call for withdrawal intend. They see Americans dying and they have no hope of victory. The Iraq War (as they call it) is costing lives and shows no sign of ending. Meanwhile, Iran is getting nuclear weapons, North Korea already has them, Syria and Iran are sponsoring continuing and escalating attacks on Israel -- how can we possibly "win" a war that threatens constantly to widen? Let's cut our losses, retire to our shores, and ...

And will you please stop and think for a moment?

There is no withdrawal to our shores. American prosperity requires free trade throughout most of the world. Free trade has depended for decades on American might. If we withdraw now, we announce to the world that if you just kill enough Americans, the big boys will go home and let you do whatever you want.

Every American in the world then becomes a target. And, because we have announced that we will do nothing to protect them, we will soon be trading only with nations that have enough strength to protect their own shores and borders.

Only ... what nations are those? Not Taiwan. If they saw us abandon Iraq, what conclusion could they reach except this one: They'd better accommodate with China now, when they can still get decent terms, than wait for America to walk away from them the way we walked away from Vietnam and Iraq.

We cannot win by going home. In a short time, "home" would become a very different place, as our own prosperity and safety steadily diminished. Isolationism is a dead end. If we lose our will to protect the things that support our own prosperity, then what can we expect but the end of that prosperity -- and of any vestige of safety, as well?

The frustrating thing is that if people would just look, honestly, at the readily available data from the Muslim world, they would realize that we are winning and that the course President Bush is pursuing is, in fact, the wisest one.

Mistakes

Critics of Bush love to cite the many "mistakes" his administration has made. Most of these "mistakes" are arguable -- are they mistakes at all? -- and when you sum up the others, with any kind of rational understanding of military history, the only possible conclusion is that this is the best-run war in history, with the fewest mistakes. And most of the mistakes we've made are the kind that become clear to morning-after quarterbacks but were difficult to avoid in the fog of war.

Worse yet, Bush's opponents invariably depict these mistakes as being the result of deliberately chosen policies -- a ludicrous charge, but one that is taken seriously by an astonishing number of people who should know better. The game, you see, is blame. It's not enough to say, Bush made a mistake. You have to say, Bush deliberately did it wrong for evil purposes and he must be punished.

But let's accept the fairy tale that this war has been badly run. That still does not change the fact that on all of the biggest points, Bush has made exactly the right choice -- and he has been the only one who has even seen the need to make those choices!

Take North Korea, for instance. Bush recognized instantly that North Korea, with China as its sponsor and protector, is simply beyond the reach of American power at this time. This will not always be true, but his administration is pursuing a careful, quiet, firm policy of diplomatic pressure on China to do what must be done to curb North Korean insanity.

What about Iran? The idea of a ground war in Iran -- especially when we're still fighting in Iraq -- seems impossible.

But it is also probably unnecessary. Because Iran's present government is not just hated, it is also losing its grip on power.

Not on the trappings of power -- they control the "elections" to such a point that nobody can be nominated without the approval of the ayatollahs.

But government power -- even in democracies -- depends absolutely on the will of the people to obey. And when you rule by tyranny and oppression, the obedience of the people comes from the credibility of the threat of violence from the government.

The obvious examples are Red Square in Moscow and Tiananmen Square in Beijing. In Moscow, when Yeltsin and the pro-democracy demonstrators defied the tanks, the Russian Army did not open fire. Why not? Either they refused to obey the order to shoot, or the order was not given -- but if it was not given, it was almost certainly because the tyrants knew that it would not be obeyed.

In other words, the government had lost the ability to inflict deadly force on its own population.

In Tiananmen Square, however, the government gave the order and the troops did fire. As a result, the tyranny continued -- and continues to this day.

Tyrannies only continue in power when they can give the order to kill their own people and be obeyed.

In Iran, there have been several incidents in the past months and years where troops refused to fire on demonstrators. This is huge news (virtually unreported in the West, of course), because of what it means: The ayatollahs' days are numbered.

If President Bush invaded Iran on the ground, bombing Iranian cities and killing Iranian soldiers, he would accomplish only what Hitler did by invading Russia -- uniting an oppressed people in support of a hated tyrant.

But, as was pointed out in a pair of excellent analytical pieces in the most recent Commentary magazine, we don't have to do anything of the kind.

Oil Is Our Weapon, Too

Iran's ace-in-the-hole is not its nuclear weapon -- in their rational moments, even the most rabid of the ayatollahs must understand that if they ever used (or allowed someone else to use) a nuclear weapon, we would destroy them, period. That nuke is meant only as a deterrent -- it can't be used any other way -- and while there's a remote chance that Iran might allow their nukes to be put into the hands of some terrorist group, it would have to be a group they control absolutely. In other words, it would not be Al-Qaeda. (Though Hezbollah would be bad enough.)

The real threat from Iran is their ability to shut down the Persian Gulf and cut off the world's supply of oil from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and the Gulf nations.

That would not really bother the United States -- gas prices would shoot up on the open market, of course, but we can get by on oil provided by non-Gulf sources.

Not so for the rest of the world, though. And Iran is poised, with small boats and thousands of missiles, to shut down all oil production and transportation in the Persian Gulf.

What few seem to realize (according to the article in Commentary) is that Iran is far more dependent on oil revenues than we are on getting their oil. When President Bush determines that he has given the Iranians ample chance to demonstrate to the few rational statesmen left in Europe that there is no possibility of meaningful negotiations with the tyrants of Tehran, his obvious course of action is to shut down Iranian power in the gulf and seize their oil assets.

If we strike first, we can eliminate their ability to do mischief in the gulf quite readily. Their forces, however numerous, are pathetically vulnerable. Unlike their dispersed and shielded nuclear development capability, their military forces in the gulf are in obvious and accessible positions.

So are their own oil assets. They are as dependent on the Gulf to reach the world oil market as any of their neighbors. If we seize their oil platforms, destroy their shipping, and impose an absolute blockade on Iranian shipping in the Gulf -- while eliminating their ability to damage anybody else's shipping -- how long do you think the tyranny would remain in power?

Here's a hint: They'd run out of money very, very quickly.

Here's another hint: Their military is already refusing to obey their most outrageous orders. When the military finds themselves saddled with a government that has brought the destruction of most of their oil revenues, all because of their insane determination to take on the United States, how long before the ayatollahs are arrested and sent home? Or else made irrelevant by placing a "committee of public safety" above them, to veto their decisions and make peace with the West?

Maybe it wouldn't turn out that way. But it's our best chance -- and that's the chance that Bush is obviously preparing for. He has made no attempt to prepare the American people for an invasion of Iran. But he has made it crystal clear that Iranian misbehavior will not be tolerated -- and that regime change is the desired outcome.

If Iran's ayatollahs were toppled, how long would Syria continue to misbehave? Answer: About fifteen minutes. Syria is a poor country. They are only able to make trouble because they have Iran's support.

Shiites and Sunnis

Here's the other asset we have that no one seems to take into account when judging Bush's conduct of the War on Terror: We are really caught up in an ancient civil war between Shiites and Sunnis.

Al-Qaeda on the Sunni side and Iran's ayatollahs on the Shiite side have both been playing the same game all along. They don't seriously think that they can conquer the United States (yet) -- so why have they been provoking us?

Because they're belling the cat. Or poking the bull with sticks. Why? Because they are performing on the stage of world Islam, putting on rival plays. Both plays have the same message: Look, we're the heroes who have God on our side, because we're the ones who have provoked the great Shaitan and gotten away with it!

Iran's Shiites had the upper hand for quite a while, bringing down one U.S. President (Carter) and getting another -- tough-guy Reagan -- to withdraw the Marines from Lebanon and then come begging to Iran's door in his stupid, cowardly arms-for-hostages deal.

Then Al-Qaeda had the upper hand in their play, showing the Muslim world that it was the Sunnis who were blowing up American boats and embassies and, finally, the twin towers in New York City itself.

It's all theatre. It's all an effort by Bin Laden to restore the Caliphate with himself, of course, as Caliph -- spiritual dictator of the Muslim world. The goal? Not just to unite Sunni Islam under a Caliph again, but to then make war on and crush Shiite resistance. That is the prize. Only when it is won would a united Islam be ready to conquer the rest of the world, finishing the task that was left unfinished by previous waves of Muslim conquest.

Meanwhile, Iran's ayatollahs are trying to show the Muslim world that it is they, the Shiite leaders, who have God on their side. That was what the recent campaign in Lebanon was all about -- to steal the glory back from Al-Qaeda.

But wait. It's even more complicated than that. Because there are other divisions within the Muslim world. Iraqi Shiites have no love for, and do not accept the authority of, the Persian clerics. Arabic-speaking Shiites have no desire to have Farsi-speaking Shiites rule over them.

So we have an amazingly convoluted situation in the middle east. Iran and its puppet, Syria, are cooperating support of the Sunni resistance in Iraq. Why? It's not because Syria's rulers are nominally Baathist as Saddam was -- Baathism is dead. Instead, it's the ancient tribalism that is at the fore. Syria's rulers are members of a tiny religious minority that is an offshoot of Shia, and thus they help Iran maintain access to its Shiite allies in Lebanon partly in order to shore up their own position vis-a-vis their own mostly-Sunni population.

So why are these Shiites and crypto-Shiites supporting the Sunnis in Baghdad?

Because anything that keeps America distracted is good for them. And if the Americans do pack up and go home, then the Shiites can claim the victory -- even though it's mostly Sunnis who are blowing themselves up in Israel and Baghdad.

Besides, the Sunni insurgents in Iraq are keeping the Iraqi Shiites off balance. The last thing the Iranian ayatollahs want is for Iraq to become a democratic nation with a Shiite majority, because at that moment it will be the Iraqi Shiite leaders who will have the most credibility as leaders of the Shiite wing of Islam.

So the leadership of the Iraqi Shiites are perceived as rivals by the ayatollahs of Iran. Thus the Iranians support the Iraqi Shiites' enemies -- providing the weapons that are used to murder Shiites in Iraq.

It's an astonishingly twisted game -- and as long as we don't do anything really, really stupid, like withdrawing from Iraq, all these various treacheries will inevitably lead to the fall of the tyrants in Iran, and therefore in Syria, and therefore the taming of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Bush's game is to keep from letting any of these faction unite, while preparing to deliver strategic blows that can bring down the ayatollahs at relatively little cost.

Every action has repercussions. Just as our withdrawal from Iraq would terrify and silence our allies everywhere, and embolden our enemies, so also would the fall of the ayatollahs -- particularly if it is as the result of an American intervention in the Gulf -- make waves everywhere. Democracy would be perceived as the wave of the future. Our friends in many countries would feel free to speak up for democracy and pro-American policies -- and their enemies would be afraid to silence them.

North Korea might go through a paroxysm of defiance -- but they would still understand the lesson. America will not be bullied by tyrants. We will stand for democracy, destroying our enemies at the "time and place of our choosing." Negotiations with North Korea would instantly take on a very different tone; and China's attitude, too, would become considerably more cooperative with us.

This is the victory that awaits us -- and it remains possible for two reasons only:

1. America's brilliant, brave, and well-trained military, which projects not just power but decency and compassion wherever our soldiers go, and

2. President George W. Bush, who, regardless of his critics and detractors, has steadfastly pursued the only course that holds the hope of victory without plunging us into a worldwide war with a united Islam or isolating America in a world torn by chaos.

Those are the scylla and charybdis that threaten us on either hand. If we do not win this containable war now, following the plan President Bush has set forth, we will surely end up fighting far bloodier wars for the next generation.

And the rhetoric of this election proves that we have precious few politicians in either party who have the brains, will, or courage to be taken seriously as alternatives to George W. Bush in the guidance of our nation through this dangerous, complicated world.

If we, the American people, are stupid enough to give control of either or both houses of Congress to the Democratic Party in this election, we will deserve the world we find ourselves in five years from now.

But Bush, being the wise and moderate politician that he is, may actually be able to continue his foreign policy despite the opposition of a Democratic Congress.

What really scares me is the 2008 election. The Democratic Party is hopeless -- only clowns seem to be able to rise to prominence there these days, while they boot out the only Democrats serious about keeping America's future safe. But the Republicans are almost equally foolish, trying to find somebody who is farther right than Bush -- somebody who will follow the conservative line far better than the moderate Bush has ever attempted -- and somebody who will "kick butt" in foreign policy.

So if we get one of the leading Democrats as our new President in 2009, we'll be on the road to pusillanimous withdrawal and the resulting chaos in the world.

While if we elect any of the Republicans who are extremist enough to please the Hannity wing of the party, our resulting belligerence will likely provoke Islam into unifying behind one of the tyrants, which is every bit as terrifying an outcome.

I hope somebody emerges in one of the parties, at least, who commits himself or herself to continuing Bush's careful, wise, moderate, and so-far-successful policies in the War on Terror.

Meanwhile, we have this election. You have your vote. For the sake of our children's future -- and for the sake of all good people in the world who don't get to vote in the only election that matters to their future, too -- vote for no Congressional candidate who even hints at withdrawing from Iraq or opposing Bush's leadership in the war. And vote for no candidate who will hand control of the House of Representatives to those who are sworn to undo Bush's restrained but steadfast foreign policy in this time of war.