Thinking Back

I’ve been thinking about this prior Avocare post for several weeks now … more so as the body count rises, especially today as I watched wife cry when reading this story on CNN, asking aloud about the wives and children, asking how “anyone could believe the sword is so much more mighty than then pen.” I post below the closing paragraphs of what I wrote then, on 13 March 2003:

The old saying is that adversity does not build character, it reveals it. We will learn much about our character in the coming weeks …

… Kofi Annan, who when all is said and done, will oversee a world body that either moves forward in fostering international security, or which sinks further into irrelevance …

… Bush and Blair, who will raise from their beds in several days knowing with certainty that they have condemned loved fathers, sons, daughters, and innocents to death, and that they will soon see the coffins returning home because of their choices …

… Chirac, who will ultimately resolve for himself whether his actions embodied leadership or Napoleonism, and whether the ends he secures were worth the consequences he has wrought …

… each of us, for this war or against: in several weeks we will look in the mirror and know we endorsed a course of action that was the right or wrong decision in the end, and at least half of us will know consequences we did not foresee …

… but not Saddam Hussein. A man without character, without conscience, is incapable of self evaluation … is capable only of monstrosity …

… and most certainly the US, British, and Australian soldiers who will keep their word, and independent of their opinions or their politics, rise up and charge once more into the breach.

I support action in Iraq. Regardless of position, we all pray the ends will justify the means. But those means will soon be very real … on CNN … in our work … in our homes in the form of consequences we all will feel. This is a global conflict. It will have global consequences. It will reveal the character in us and in our leaders. And as the matter runs its course, my hope is that our leaders will rise to the occasion of global leadership, and appreciate the ends they must secure are the ends of the world.

The mirror stands before us …