...but not the ugliest of things.

There is nothing I can say today that is profound enough or meaningful enough to be worthy of the occasion. All I can say is it feels like yesterday, still raw and unbelievable. Being a former and future military officer and a current military spouse, though, I do feel compelled to comment on a trend I find disturbing: that increasing numbers of Americans are calling for an end to our involvement in Afghanistan.

I hope that this weekend's revelation of new and credible terrorist threats will help people understand that we can't just abandon this fight and leave al Qaeda--who promises to continue their fight--to regain strength and operate unmolested.

But I doubt it. Time marches on, urgency subsides, memories fade.

When I was a 17-year-old freshman at the Air Force Academy, we were made to memorize and recite a quotation that wouldn't resonate strongly with me until years later, when I had encountered more of the world's citizens. Today it is the most powerful to me of the many quotations that were etched on my mind:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

John Stuart Mill