Sacrifice

President Bush announced yesterday he quit playing golf out of respect for the families of U.S. soldiers killed in the Iraq war. His last round of golf was reportedly in 2003, when he decided it "just wasn't worth it" anymore. What an inspiring story. It is so rare these days that a leader truly leads. There are a lot of people out there saying they "support the troops," but who can claim they are actually making the kind of sacrifice President Bush has made? And the best part is that he never even wanted credit for it. He hasn't played golf since 2003, and he is just announcing this now? It just makes me so proud to be an American to think that President Bush has been silently suffering, not playing golf, for 5 years and we all had no idea.

I have to take back all those things I said about Bush not supporting the troops. Sure, he may have sent them into an unnecessary war based on questionable intelligence, put them in more danger by horribly mismanaging the post-invasion strategy and failing to provide them with decent armor and equipment, and for icing on the cake is stretching them to the breaking point with increasingly longer tours and inadequate leave, but wow, for almost the entire time he hasn't played a single round of golf! And we all know how much President Bush loves golf. It must be just about as much as our troops love their spouses and children, or as much as their families love them, or it would be a slap in the face, or, more appropriately, an IED in the cranium.

If President Bush loves golf as much as I love Creed, I totally know what he's going through. I remember when I gave up listening to Creed for Lent one year, and it was so hard! If giving up golf is as hard for the President as giving up Creed was for me, it must be totally killing him! Well not actually killing him, because that would be what's happening to our soldiers in Iraq, but I bet he really, really, really can't wait for this thing to be over so he can golf again. Which is weird, because he's had so many chances to stop the war from dragging on, yet he continues to veto any legislation with a timeline for troop withdrawal. I would think, knowing that as soon as the war is over he can golf again, he'd be jumping all over getting our troops out of there. Maybe he's just nervous about getting back on the links after such a big layoff. Or maybe he just wants to wait until after he's out of office, so he can avoid moments like these: