The Middle East has never been a friendly place.

As Americans, we tend to forget this. Most of us see the Middle East through the narrow spyglass of our TV screens, whose broadcasts fail to provide any historical context or perspective. We see the instability of the Middle East and point our fingers at its dictators, or its poverty, or its wars.

Who can blame us? We are blessed at home with a tolerant government and a community of citizens who uphold its laws. Yet it is a mistake to believe that every country in the world is expecting to achieve this end. We forget that in some far away regions of the world, stability is more prized than liberty.

For many decades, governments in the Middle East have successfully created the bare thread of stability, but this has come at a price. In a climate of timeless ethnic, geographic, and religious conflicts, the people of the Middle East seem willing to trade their liberty for security. Look to the people of Iran, who are unconcerned with their oppressive regime so long as their security and materialistic ambitions are satisfied. Consider the monarchy of Saudi Arabia whose oil-rich elites happily cede their civil rights for a steady paycheck.

We see these governments and we disapprove. As Americans, we are willing to fight for our freedom above all else, but most of our current generation has never fought for this freedom in the same way Iraqis are now doing in the war zone of Iraq. In this Middle East, there is much less of an expectation for freedom, or justice, or especially tolerance.

This is what America is changing in Iraq.

Our founding fathers created a Constitution and Bill of Rights which are widely considered exaggerated values, or ‘great expectations,’ by the rest of this Hobbesian world. Our forefathers also gave us a mission: to be a beacon of light in promoting these expectations and a helping hand for those willing to achieve them.

When the course of human events requires idealists, the world looks to America. Our strengths are our virtues. Our inherent belief in the self-evident freedoms of mankind should compel us to strive for the hard-fought successes in Iraq, not back away from its harrowing sacrifices.

In essence, we are not fighting for Iraq – we are fighting for the legitimacy of our lofty beliefs in this dark, realist-driven world. Only by success in the Middle East will we be able to justify America’s founding virtues in the face of those who reject our system of democratic freedoms like Iran, North Korea, China, and many others.

Victory in the Middle East brings Iraq, and us, closer to truly realizing those ‘great expectations.’