...and one more thing....

... and this is important. Maybe the most important thing you will read today.

(there is a link below - you just have to read through my fluff for a while to get to the point, ok? Do me just this one favor. )

I have a lot of politically minded friends... :0) To my admiration and surprise, some of them you couldn't have paid me to believe they would ever be so... (ahem... Kelly... :-) ) I get emails every day from friends (and oh yes, my former MIL) directing me to their latest find - the latest bit of information or news... all of which I read and remain grateful for receiving... you can't be and educated citizen - or responsible voter - without knowing as much as you can take in - from all the angles.

So... I'll just tell you. I am about as conservative Republican as they come. I don't know how this happened - my dad is as flaming southern Democrat as they come. (This makes for much discussion during dinnertimes and election years) I am a supporter of our President (W) and, most importantly, supportive of our troops overseas right now. I have a dear, dear friend who is there - waiting ever so patiently to come home to his wife, new son, and children - and even he has shared with me the importance of knowing that America is behind him.

However, as you read the following - put your political beliefs aside for the time being. Democrat, Republican, Kerry, Bush - whatever... just take a deep breath and take in what you are about to read. I found the link to this blog on another friend's site.... the link title caught my eye - and, being a selfish American - I went right to it, thinking I would find the online journals of an AMERICAN family in Baghdad... what fun it would be to read about their adventures. What I found was quite the opposite. These are the journals of a mother and her sons... currently voluntarily displaced from their home, traveling the middle East and Europe as they wait for safety in thier hometown. The mother, Faiza, is the main writer - (though you can link to her college age sons sites as well.) A mother who has sent her boys from their home to college - specifically away from Baghdad. Their lives have been rocked by explosions, gunfire, casualties, and strife. These are her journals as she travels, as she worries about the upcoming elections in Iraq, and as she longs for home. They are a middle class family - with the father owning his own company - three sons - and Faiza - who seems very well spoken and much more educated than I.

I found it tearjerking - imagining my comfy life here in the states... insulted to think that this would never happen here or to me. Imagining sending my girls to far away foreign lands - keeping them from the familiarities of home. Faiza misses the simple things - dinnertimes, the market, her neighbors... and says, much to my surprise - that many Baghdad natives have left home, spreading themselves throughout the middle East and Europe - waiting to come home.

What did I find most intriguing? The things, as an American - I had never thought about. Imagine an election in your country for the FIRST time.... the division felt between the two religious groups there - the Sunni and the Shi'aats. Also - the fact that I have NEVER ever, had to even imagine leaving my home... my Kroger, my Target... even my street. And, that as I read, I found no hatred of Americans as a people - but a sadness of a country occupied, a country that, despite it's occupation, longs for true democracy.

Did it change my support of our acitvites there? I am not sure. My new hope is that we, as Americans, will be able to offer TRUE democracy to Iraq - and allow the kind of peace that will allow Faiza to return.... HOME.

A Family in Baghdad

Rachael