Thank You, Mr. Obama: From a Military Wife

"The American combat mission in Iraq has ended."


I am crying. I remember exactly where I was the night President Bush announced that we were going to war with Iraq. I was in a bar with a friend, staring in disbelief at one of the tv screens above the bar, watching Bush announce a new war, and I burst into tears and sobbed in the middle of the bar.


My husband was already in Afghanistan. It was six months after our wedding; he deployed two weeks after our wedding, six days after we got home from our honeymoon. I spent every single day terrified that I would never see him again. That I would become a war widow before I'd even had an anniversary. I knew the Iraq war meant that he would deploy again, and again, and again, and that he would be at risk even longer.


He came home safe to me twice, from two separate combat deployments. I was lucky. So many people haven't come home, or have come home forever changed by what happened to them over there. The end of this war means the beginning of new hope for military families. There is still another war, one that has gotten much more dangerous lately, and one that is incredibly important. But at least it's only one war.


One is enough. Thank you, Mr. President.