March 16, 2008 - I forgot today was Palm Sunday until I got to church and they were handing out Palms. And to think I almost decided to go to the gym today instead of going to church. But I did get lots of exercise today, playing 39 holes of disc golf and cleaning both bathrooms in our house. Ellie and I went to Skyline Chili after church. I hadn't had Skyline in several months. We went to the location on US-19, which I have only been to once, maybe 15 years ago with my grandmother and my mom and sister. Mike came over after we got home, marking his third visit to our house today. I'm gonna have to give him a key if he keeps coming over 3 times a day. Continuing my foreign relations discussion, which so far has centered on Iraq, I'm going to diverge a bit to general foreign relations throughout the middle East. As a country that is founded on "separation of church and state", with a generally great tolerance for other religions, we don't seem to relate well to the middle eastern countries which have a very strong relationship between their state sponsored religions. Many of these countries have been in turmoil and land battles for thousands of years. Meanwhile, the US has existed for only about 250 years. Yet, we've established relationships with these countries, because it benefits us financially to do so. We maintain relationships with countries that reportedly sponsor and condone terrorism (Saudi Arabia, I'm looking at you) because of the vast amount of oil they supply to us. We strangely support Israel, a country we helped to establish less than 100 years ago, on an unknown basis. As the country that represents peace and democracy, we've gone to war with, financed the militaries of, and generally gotten all up in the business of most of the countries in the middle East. I think we need to completely change our story. The United States will only ally with a country that supports peace. Threatening a country that is one of our allies means that it is threatening a peaceful nation, and all of our allies should agree to support political, economic, and if necessary, military sanctions against countries that do not band with us for peace and democracy. Heck, they don't even have to be democratic, just peaceful. It comes down to "doing the right things for the right reasons". All countries should want to be part of a coalition that supports peace and prevents violence. There will be dissidents. People will grab for power. But knowing that the force of the United States and ALL of our allies, up to complete military support of the mission, should be enough to get people to get in line. The goal should be sovereign nations with common interests, rather than nations making land grabs every time they get a hungry ruler. Our international policy should be one of promoting greater standards of living, promoting peace, promoting freedom, and having the backing of all allies in this effort.