Today is the one year anniversary of the shock and awe campaign. At the time, I was visiting my grandparents in New York while my husband stayed behind at Fort Knox. During that showdown 48 hours, my husband and I would talk on the phone and wonder what would happen. At 48 hours on the nose, he called, and we said, "Huh, I guess nothing is happening." We hung up, and that's when it started.
One year later, things have turned out better than I imagined that night last year. Enlistment into the Army has remained steady. They've darn near caught the whole deck of cards, including the father and sons who represented decades of Iraqi misery. We've rotated the entire Army in and out of Iraq; in the future it will be a shock to see someone who doesn't have a combat patch on his right shoulder. And it seems that slowly but surely the war on terror is working. Our take-it-to-the-enemy strategy has prevented another attack on American soil and scared the pants off of Libya. We've shown we're in this for the long haul, and we're not going to be distracted by weasels or donkeys.
A while back Glenn Reynolds said, "I realized after the second anniversary of September 11 that this is a marathon, not a sprint, and pacing is required."
Wise words.
Posted by Sarah at March 19, 2004 04:19 PM