There’s a game of tug-of-war being played right now in Washington and unfortunately, it is the U.S. military and the Iraqi people who are being jerked around. With the Democrat-controlled House and Senate passing a war spending bill this week insisting U.S. troops begin leaving Iraq this fall, President Bush will have no choice but follow through with his threat of veto. And he’ll be right.

Four years ago, I was in Iraq as a reporter, covering stories of faith among service members and Iraqis alike. Today, my husband is there as a deployed Navy reservist. He and his fellow Seabees are working shoulder to shoulder with the rest of our military force, helping ensure that Iraq does not just survive, but thrive. And there are parts of the country that are doing very well -- unfortunately, they’re not the parts we hear about in the news.

When I was there, the common response I got from Iraqis was how thankful they were that the U.S. showed up. One woman said, “We were hoping what happened in Afghanistan would happen here.” A chance for peace. A chance for families to live without fear. A chance for Iraqis to experience hope. Here in the Land of the Free, we see these “chances” as endowed rights.

One Iraqi man I met told me he grew up in three different wars -- he was a child during the Iraq-Iran war, he was a teen during the Gulf War and now he was a father himself, hoping the current war will be the last for Iraq, and his children. It won’t be if our troops pull out before the Iraqis are ready.

If our military leaves before the job is done, the democratic void left behind will envelop and overcome any hope of freedom flourishing. Civil war will ensue, and Al Qaeda and the rest of the international terrorist world will see what it takes to beat America. “Wear them out and they’ll give up” will be the mantra heard in terrorism training camps everywhere. Iraqi children will grow up hearing stories -- not of how the United States helped bring freedom to their country, but how the United States abandoned them when they were needed most. A terrorism recruiter’s dream.

The new leadership in Congress has offered no solutions to the war in Iraq other than to pull out. This is not a solution -- this is accepting defeat. The Democrats argue the war in Iraq is now a political conflict, a clashing of ideologies the U.S. should have nothing to do with. They should know. Safe in their Washington offices, they have continually made this war about politics. Offering contradictions instead of solutions, the majority party leaders of Congress aren’t concerned as much with policy as they are about power and who wins that power in 2008. The war isn’t their priority right now; it’s how bad they can make the current administration look. America’s future isn’t their main focus; re-election is.

Winning this tug-of-war should be far less important than doing what’s right for America and, ultimately, the world. What’s right is allowing our military to do what they’ve been doing all along: steadily making progress towards a free Iraq.