"The single brightest light"

Baxter Black - cowboy, poet, humorist and former large animal veterninarian - features an essay and a poem on his webpage that I think captures the right mood for this point in the war in Iraq and America's and the world's efforts to offer help to the world's downtrodden and to fight for freedom.

He writes:

"With your permission I would like to indulge in a little naked patriotism. The United States, during my lifetime has become a nation like none other on earth. Not because it is the most powerful nation on earth, but because we, more times than I can count, have taken the side of the oppressed with no intention to conquer, rule or pillage.

In the act of offering our assistance, we have sacraficed blood, money and lives. We have beat ourselves up. We have questioned our motives. Our leaders have engaged in heated debate about the hows and whys, but we continue to be the single brightest light for the world's mistreated. We will take on the schoolyard bully.

In spite of all of our mistakes, missteps, misjudgments and misgivings, the world today would be a completely different place if our country; conservative, liberal, black, white, rich, poor, North, South, Manhattan NY or Manhattan KS, Americans all, had turned our back on the injustices and inhumanities that relentlessly stalk the globe.

Supporting the troops and their families on the front lines in the war on terror is not a partisan act. It is an act of pride, compassion, love, concern, anguish and hope. They carry our colors into harms way, and have since 1776."

Black includes a poem to the flag, that he originally wrote in 1999 and updated for the current historical moment, that captures well the spirit of the flag and the times.

It concludes:

"And they've signed it in blood from Bunker Hill
To Saigon, Kuwait, Bosnia
Kabul, Baghdad, and Toko Ri.
I give you the flag that says to the world
Each man has a right to be free."

Baxter's sentiments are exactly the perspective that Americans need for our current round of similar challenges, I think.

For all of our disagreements about how it might occur, we all fight for freedom. For our own and for others. And that fight is bigger than any of the debates that we engage to do that better, not to abandon that cause.

And it is on that common ground that we need to stand as we debate, honestly and in good faith, how to win and secure that freedom best.