Our country has a birthday this week.  It is number 207, I think.  When you look at it one way, that appears old.  When you look at it another way, through the spectacles of history, there are many countries much older than the USA.  But we have made a good beginning.  Actually, we are beyond the beginning point.  Beyond adolescence, even.  I would say that we are in adulthood somewhere.  Maybe older young adults?  Or young median adults?

The Fourth has especial significance to me this year, for my son is serving our country in the Marine Corps in Iraq.  He called Sunday morning just before I left for church.  He said that they were at work doing what they were sent over there to do.  Sometimes I think we forget that there were many tasks which they were sent to do.  The original plan had the elimination of the Saddam regime and replacing it with a new government.  That was not projected to take very long.  It has taken a long time and is not yet complete.  The new regime is technically in power, but I would not say that it is very secure.

In the process an insurgency broke out in Iraq; that wasn't in the plan.  It has thrown the plan haywire.  It has the US bogged down in Iraq; it has our forces being killed.  No one seems to know quite what to do about it.  You can't fight it the conventional way.  It isn't there usually in the day time.  Or if it is there, it masquerades as our friend and ally.  At night it comes out in another guise.   Terrorists from outside Iraq have come in to complicate the picture.  These foreign terrorists even have the Iraqis fed up enough to cooperate with us in expelling them.

The Sunni-Shiite conflict has complicated things in Iraq immeasurably.  Did we know that at the beginning?  If so, there wasn't a clear plan for how to work with it.  It has proven much more complex than we planned on.  Well, what did we plan to do?

Apparently we planned on rebuilding the country after the initial conflict.  That we are doing and have done.  According to my son, we do that very well.  We have people who are experts in many fields, contractors, etc., who can build a school, a water system, an electrical grid, or whatever else you want and give it to the Iraqis, just as we did to Germany, Japan, and Europe after World War II.  That was called the Marshall Plan, and it worked like a charm.  This in Iraq doesn't seem to be working all that well.  I realize that we don't hear much of the good stuff, and there is apparently a lot of good news to share.  I'm proud of that.  I'm proud that my son is a part of that.  He went to Iraq wanting and hoping to make a difference.  Nine months in Iraq has taught him to scale down his expectations so that he will do what he can.  That is where our troops are--they are doing what they can do.  I suppose General Petraeus is correct; a political solution is essential.  A military solution alone is really not workable or possible.

I am grateful on this Fourth that the USA trains, equips, and supplies its military as well as it does.  I'm glad that the US military has such lofty goals and ambitions to rebuild and leave Iraq better than they found it.  And maybe they will.  I grieve the loss of life there.  War is deadly and messy.  There is nothing neat about it.  You have to pray every day and sometimes more than once a day.  I pray on July Fourth that our country will ultimately do what is right in Iraq and in other places as well.   If left to a decision made by the best of its people, the USA  usually does what is right.  Let's pray that this happens again this time.  Let's pray, also, that in the places where we are fighting now the people may one day have the blessings of liberty and prosperity which we enjoy today.