"It brings tears to my eyes when I think that two words I came up with are being shared in a situation where aloha is so critical," Klink said. "Everything that aloha emotes in a wartime situation brings a dynamic to humanity that in no other way probably exists."

It started in March when Klink, who created the phrase "Live Aloha," received a letter from Spc. Clay Conley, a self-employed sushi chef from Makiki.

"Aloha from Baghdad!" Conley wrote. "The Hawai'i Army National Guard has landed in Baghdad for the next year. Guess what? Not a lot of aloha here."

Klink packed up about 400 of the free bumper stickers — his entire inventory at the time — and mailed them to Conley. The soldier responded in May and said the entire shipment disappeared in seconds.

Conley didn't say what the Iraqis thought of "Live Aloha," but most of them cannot read English.

Klink, the 39-year-old founder and chief executive officer of Direct Marketing, has a solution for that: bumper stickers in Arabic.

He's working with students from the University of Hawai'i and Hawai'i Pacific University to ensure the phrase does not unwittingly insult someone.

The translation is a little different, though.

"The best way they could translate it is: Loving Live," Klink said.

Commanders at the Hawai'i National Guard's Honolulu headquarters would like to see the Arabic bumper stickers before they're mailed, but they have no official control over Klink. They're afraid the translation might offend someone, said Guard spokesman James Young.

"We can't stop him from sending it," Young said. "But as a courtesy, we should look at it to say, 'Yes, that is correct,' or 'No, that's different.' "

Klink wants to get the new bumper stickers in the mail as soon as possible.

He's convinced that Iraq understands aloha.

"Every society has a societal sense of good," he said. "It is just being bombed and shot out of these people every day now."