We continue to prepare for the largest single unit call-up of a National Guard unit since World War II in support of our war in Afghanistan. Iowa’s Second Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division is in Minnesota training for their deployment. Nothing has changed there.

Activists in Dubuque, Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Sioux City and across the state stand on corners each week to protest the war. Many have been demonstrating on the corner since the beginning of the Iraq War. They can be expected to continue to demonstrate until our troops come home. Nothing has changed there.

Most Iowans are willing to express their unconditional support for people they know who are being or have been deployed in our military. While government may fail to adequately take care of our veterans, especially for the treatment of post traumatic stress disorder, people of every stripe respect them for their devotion to a cause higher than themselves. Nothing has changed there.

What has changed with the McChrystal-Petraeus change of command is that we got a brief glimpse of how our key commanders have lapses in judgment that have real consequences. Our concern is that these lapses include things more important than speaking out of turn to a reporter for Rolling Stone Magazine. Things that have material impact on the outcome of the war in Afghanistan and affect lives as well as careers.

Ed Flaherty of Iowa City said it best in a post on Blog for Iowa, “War is easy to start, very difficult to end. The U.S. cannot 'wash its hands' of Afghanistan, and no scenario for its future is certain or pretty. And leaving Afghanistan without the capture of Osama bin Laden is and should be offensive to many, myself included. The one thing certain, in my opinion, is that we are irretrievably cast in the role of foreign military invaders (like Alexander, the Turks, the Mongols, the British, and the Russians), and that no progress can be made unless and until we undertake a military withdrawal.” This hasn’t changed either.