Bush Seeks Value in Freedom,
Earns Support to Preserve Faith

Writer Kathy Simcox lives in Columbus, Ohio. Ms Simcox is an administrative assistant at the College of the Arts at Ohio State University. She has a BA in psychology and is pursuing her second degree in religious studies.

• President Bush seeks to protect the rights to observe and practice ALL faiths, including that of true Islam. For his fervor to protect the freedom of religious practice, and indeed our own civil freedoms, he is supporting all of humanity.

• President Bush is fighting an enemy set to dominate and or destroy these practices we cherish in the United States. I am a free American, and I believe in this fight to preserve not only our freedom at home, but to uphold the values of faith we each may enjoy in every nation.

The war on terror should not be a political war as some suggest. It should not be a war of rival ideologies; Republican against Democrat or Christian against Muslim. The war on terror is a war on evil. There have been countless wars in our world that to some extent has protected us against some level of evil. But this evil we fight today is an evil more bitter, more deadly than anything you or I have seen. It is an evil so deeply rooted in hatred that it will take a very long time, if ever, to defeat.

• I am against war not because I am a Democrat or a peace-loving hippie. My Christian values tell me that killing is wrong, because my Christian values profess love towards my Muslim brothers and sisters even though they worship God differently than I do. My Christian values tell me that it’s wrong to kill millions of innocent people, on both sides, because of our differences in belief.

• I support the war on terror not because I am a Republican or a conservative bigot, but because I am an American who holds the value of freedom very near my heart. I am an American who wants to live within the protective walls of that freedom for as long as I can, the very same protective walls so many young people have sacrificed their lives to keep standing.

I wish every nation to experience first-hand the sense of freedom that both President Bush and I envision and work to preserve. And so far, President Bush has succeeded in balancing these ideas, compared with past conflicts, with minimal casulaties, while continuing to offer these same freedoms we enjoy at home to those who have long fought, yet failed, to secure.