Sometimes I marvel at my good fortune. I'm just glad it isn't me who has to be turned over in the middle of the night because of bed sores or fitted for a prosthetic limb after stepping on an IED on the road to Samara. It isn't me who has to curse the darkness after shrapnel has lacerated my optic nerves. It isn't me who has to worry about feeling my toes or suffer the agonizing paralysis migrating from my spine and into my soul.

Who has to be the good soldier? Fortunately, not me, though I'm the most loyal of Americans. I serve in my own way. I'm never going to be the soldier who salutes with a stump where his hand used to be. Most of us fight evil-doers as conscripts in the army of American Express. Those of us left behind to grow the economy have to occasionally put up with long lines at the airport. If we close our eyes, we can imagine shorter lines at the Army recruiting center. Which one would I rather be in? Do you really have to ask?

Boy, am I lucky. I can come and go as I please without worrying about Donald Rumsfeld ordering me to join my unit in some godforsaken country most of us still can't find on a map. Life would be unbearable if I were at the mercy of an indefinite military service clause. Who needs that Sword of Damocles hanging over his head? I'm never going to sign one of those things if I can help it.

Let someone else experience the glories of war. I don't mind cheering. I believe in this war enough to send someone else's kid, but not mine. Let someone else's baby do the fighting for everything we all supposedly believe in. It's not that I don't believe in sacrifice, but I think it ought to be based on whether the kid has potential in other areas.

Dick Cheney once said he had "other priorities" when he filed five military deferments during the Vietnam War. He was on to something. Kids today have their whole lives in front of them. Let those who don't have the same opportunities serve their country in this useful and much needed way.

Someone has to fight the terrorists over there; otherwise, they just might get lucky and blow up someone I love over here. I don't mind paying half a trillion dollars a year to prevent that, despite it being as remote a possibility as one can imagine. Still, the government better not raise my taxes. I'm already sacrificing enough as it is.

Better that their morgues overflow with 40, 50, 60 bodies a day than have ours stay busy over here. Better our interrogators ply their trade over there than within screaming distance of me and mine over here. Better their torturers practice their brand of torture on their own people than on ours. Better those others have a hard time looking at their faces in the mirror than that I miss a single night of sleep. Better someone else's conscience is on the line. I have to go to work in the morning.

In the next election, I'm voting for candidates who want to stay the course. I'm voting for patriots who understand that civil liberties don't mean anything if you're dead. They understand what's at stake in this war of civilizations. Our country can't sustain another defeat at the hands of primitive foreigners. As the world's only superpower, it's our duty to be the enforcers of all that is good, even if we have to break our laws and compromise our morality to do it.

I know things are actually better than they've been portrayed by the media. They're opening new schools over there to replace the ones blown up by our bombs three years ago and insurgents' bombs three months ago. The price of gas is even starting to dip. Something must be working, right? I'm feeling better already.

It may be another generation or two before the terrorists have been completely rooted from their rat holes. That's OK. I'm voting for patriots who have the courage to send our brave children into that infernal darkness. There's a war to be won. Fortunately, I have nothing to lose.