Dear America...

Dear America, we are not good afraid.

A few of you have heard this story, but it's a good one, I think.

I was in Karbala, sometime late summer 2003. I was getting ready to bed down for the night, when word came there was something big happening in the middle of the city. So, gear up and roll out.

It was almost dark, and I was getting bits and pieces on the ride in. The MPs who were co-located with the Iraqi Police had been doing a routine patrol down near the Imam Ali Mosque. Somehow, they got turned around and caught in the middle of a crowd and got closer to the mosque than we had agreed armed men would come.

They didn't have a translator, and every worst possible fear for their presence was all the crowd was left with. People in the crowd threw rocks, cracking the windshield on a Humvee. Someone somewhere in the the crowd fired off a shot, hitting an MP in the hand.

The MPs returned fire, killing the shooter.

In the chaos that ensued, the MPs found a break in the crowd and hauled out of there.

They got back to the police station, but looking down the long boulevard leading to the mosque, they saw a mass of humanity gradually boiling toward them.

The MPs and IPs set up a line outside the police station, and that's about when I got there.

The crowd was maybe a couple hundred feet away now, chanting something -- I still don't know what it was. They stretched from the station to the mosque -- something like a mile away -- clogging the street that ran 5-6 lanes wide.

I have been to rallies that filled the Mall in Washington DC, yet I do not think I have seen more people in my entire life bent on a single purpose than I did that night.

Then a captain, whose name I should remember and don't, but he was a Marine -- in every sense of the word -- stepped out.

He took off his kevlar, and he handed it back. He unstrapped his body armor and pistol belt, and handed them back as well.

He stepped out toward that crowd in nothing but camies and cover (uniform and hat, for you civilian types). He had the translator call out over the PA that he wanted to meet with the elder in the crowd.

And there those two men stood in the street, and they talked.

I don't know what all each of them said, but in a few minutes, the crowd was sitting and the chanting had stopped.

The talking continued, and in time, the crowd dispersed.

Finally, the MPs and the IPs moved back to the station, and the rest of us back to the old, abandoned building on the edge of the city that we called HQ.

It was one of the most powerful things I have ever witnessed.

And it worries me that people will miss the point of this story, that they might think of their fellow Americans they, for whatever reason, regard as "the enemy" and think, "Yeah, those guys really need to put down their arms and listen."

Because life isn't about asking when the last time was that someone tried to understand you. I've walked that road plenty, and I assure you it is a dead end. Life is about asking yourself -- constantly -- how hard you are trying to understand others. What set of events put them where they are or gave them the beliefs and views they hold? What in their daily life and experience reinforces and directs their thoughts and actions? And if your conclusion about that question ends in a sneer, I wouldn't trust it, personally.

And I fall off of that more often than I stand by it, but God help me, I'm trying.

Life isn't about demanding the other people sit down or disarm, it's about putting your neck out there, putting your faith out there, putting your hope out there, and damn the number of times you get kicked for it.

Because Americans, we don't wear fear well, even when we call it pragmatism, even when we call it patriotism. We don't get anywhere when we are only yelling at one another. We are heading down a dead end road the minute we decide we don't need to listen.

On the other hand, when we hope, when we try, when we risk and look at unbelievable odds and say, "Yeah... but damn the odds," that is when we take these amazing steps forward that have marked our every dark hour with the undeniable light that is not our birthright, but rather our heritage, our obligation. Because we forget sometimes, in crying about our rights, the obligations that go hand-in-hand with those rights, both our obligations to those around us and to future generations.

More than any flag or symbol or creed, the banner under which all the most important victories of our history have ever been won is unflagging and unreasonable hope.

Our history is pock-marked and cratered by so many unjust, cruel, and cowardly moments, yet at every one you can find some American voice protesting, recording for history, and saying, "We must be better than this."

That is the thread that winds through and connects the best of our ideals, even in those times when noble words about freedom seemed ironic set against backdrops like slavery. The hands that hold that thread out for us to take it up are bloodied, battered, dying hands. They are not victorious, but defeated hands, only asking that we recall and remember, and do not faulter or shrink from the noble ideals until there is victory.

And if we shirk from that, shrink from one another, retreat instead to our dismal corners, proudly hold "us" as in any way superior to "them," that is when all the sacrifice will have been for nothing. That is when we will take our strides ever backward until some better generation, some fearless future generation, discovers the hope and faith we have left lying in the darkness of our fear, raises it up, and carries forward the true standard of all that we have ever done right.