I usually don't write blogs or hubs on personal issues but this time it's just too important not to. We have entered the two most important months in our nation's history. We are about to decide who will lead this country during an incredibly critical time in our history.

Now before I get into why I am writing this, let me give you some background on the writer. I am a 38-year-old white man living in the Wisconsin suburbs. I grew up in a conservative household where I learned values of hard work by getting up nearly every day of summer vacation and working as a brick tender for my father's masonry business. It was a great experience and it helped give me a work ethic that I believe is sorely missing in our workforce these days.

Today I run my own commercial writing business while also working as a technical/copywriter for a large corporation. My wife is an officer in the Army National Guard and recently returned from a deployment to Iraq. We truly love our country and feel very fortunate for all the freedoms that it offers to us.

While we look at the potential of her going for a second deployment, I can't help but think about why we are there in the first place. She has told me many stories about all the good that she and her soldiers were able to do for the Iraqi people to make sure they are safe and able to have a good future. She is proud of what she was able to do while she was there, as am I. But still I can't help but think of why we are there in the first place. False intelligence or whatever it was that has brought us into Iraq leads to the fact that this is a war of deception.

My wife has been fortunate. She has only been deployed once so far. But what about those soldiers who have deployed four and five times. What about the stress on them? What about the stress on their families? We were at a neighborhood get together the other day and a lady came up and started talking to us. After she had found out that my wife was in the military and had been deployed she started to go into a rant about how she is so happy that we are at war against all those evil Middle Eastern people (her words were a little more colorful) and how she was so thankful that my wife and her fellow soldiers were able to fight for her freedom because she couldn't. I just stood there smiling and biting my lip at the same time. I was thinking that this person couldn't be any more than 35. If she was that patriotic and pro-war than why wasn't she out there defending her country against these evil people that she speaks of? Was it because she had children maybe? Well that doesn't stop many of the soldiers I have had the opportunity to meet. Was it because she thought she was too old. Well that's not a legitimate excuse either because the Army is accepting people in its ranks that are well past ago 35. What it boils down to is that most conservative minded people that I have met believe we should be fighting this war but they will not sully their hands by picking up arms and getting in the fight themselves. I guess that's what embarrasses and disgusts me as an American about most Republicans. They want the glory but at the expense of other's blood. It's a sick, sick mindset.

Now we have John McCain wanting to expand the battlefront into Iran. This is a part of the Republican nominee's campaign that should be concerning to those glory-without-the-blood Republicans. We already have a military fighting force stretched dangerously thin across two theaters. Now John McCain wants to take us into a third country. There is little doubt if this happens that we will not only require a military draft that will include all young people - from Democratic and Republican parties - but will also provoke two sleeping giants in Russia and China. By going into Iran we are delving deep into Asia. And just as we would be concerned if Chinese paratroopers suddenly started dropping into Canada these Asian powers will likely not take kindly to having U.S. troops in their backyard.

John McCain is a good person. There's no disputing that. But for some reason...somehow he has been lead down a dark path and those that were successful in misleading him are hoping to do the same to the rest of America. I truly wish he would have beat George W. Bush back in 2000. My guess is if that was the case we wouldn't be in this mess.

But he didn't and now we live in dangerous times. Not because of what happened on September 11, 2001, but because of what happened and what didn't happen between that grim day in our nation's history and today. We had the weight of the rest of the world behind us then. We had their sympathy and their trust that we would go after the bad guys and bring them to justice. But it didn't happen. Instead we went and attacked a sovereign nation.

Today bin Laden is still at large and we are still at great risk for a terrorist attack. We have alienated ourselves from the rest of the world and the scary thing is that there are people in this country - including McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin - who don't care. It's time to drop the go-it-alone cowboy diplomacy and start mending fences with people that we once called evil and our enemies.

I'm a pretty big guy and have a bit of a temper that has gotten into my share of fights during my youth. One thing I remember coming out the other side of every one of those fights was that I never felt better about myself for getting into them and they never resolved anything. In fact in many cases if I ended up beating up the guy in many cases he would seek revenge by coming back at me with a weapon or by having one of his bigger friends come start something with me. Nevertheless nothing was ever resolved through violence. Diplomacy and negotiation are how adults take care of things. War is always a last resort. We as a country need to realize that as a truth once again by putting down our fists and extending our hand to help up rather than beat down our fellow human beings.

We have too much at stake right now with all the lives being lost to an ill-advised war to allow yet another war hawk into office and allow more death and compound the danger and hatred toward our great country. Love John McCain for what he is to our country - a mighty hero. Don't soil his reputation and most importantly the United States reputation by voting him into office. It's too important a time in history to be playing with fire.

Vote Obama-Biden this November.