Since the war on terror began, 1,200 American troops have been killed.  John Kerry sees this as a tragic milestone; I see it as a heroic sacrifice.

Last week marked the death of the 1,000th brave American soldier in Iraq.  John Kerry calls this a “tragic milestone” and says this is “the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.”  He says the money we have spent fighting in Iraq would be better spent on education, health care, and jobs here at home.  Like George McGovern in 1972, he says that if elected President, he will bring the troops home.

Kerry’s supporters on the left agree.  They say our soldiers have died in vain (Susan Estrich) and that “this is a war we cannot win” (The Nation).  New York Times columnist Bob Herbert summed up what every liberal thinks:  “It was Vietnam all over again.”  The point being, of course, that America should quit the field of battle now, before more American lives are lost on a doomed and ignoble endeavor.  What a grave disservice the left does to the nation, and to our fighting men and women overseas, by voicing such defeatist attitudes.

No one — on the Left or the Right — has a crystal ball that can “see” the future.  Rather, the future is what we make of it.  Whether that future is free of the scourge of international Islamic terrorism will depend on the actions we take today, how we respond to unforeseen events tomorrow, and — most importantly — the goals and ideals that guide our behavior.  One thing is clear:  the old policies of apology and appeasement have failed (see Munich Olympics, Pan Am Flight 103, Khobar Towers, 9/11, Israel, Bali, Beslan, and on and on).  With stakes as high as mushroom clouds over Manhattan, President Bush understands that a bolder, more proactive strategy is required to defeat terrorism once and for all.   

Objectively, there is no reason to doubt that America and her allies can defeat this enemy, just like we defeated nazism and communism.  We have more wealth, more knowledge, more manpower, and more military and technological power than the terrorists.  The only question is whether we want to defeat this enemy — whether, like Churchill in 1940 and Reagan in 1980, we have the fortitude and resolve to do so.

The anti-war crowd’s hysterical pronouncements that the war is “unwinnable” tell us nothing about our actual prospects for victory in Iraq, and everything about the Left’s inner feelings and beliefs.  The ugly truth is that liberals who oppose the war in Iraq, and the war on terror generally, do not want the United States to prevail.  This is why they already are prepared to raise the white flag of surrender.

While cowardice partly explains the Left’s animus towards the war, the bottom line is that they do not view Islamic terrorists as evildoers who must be destroyed before they kill again.  Instead, they see them as “freedom fighters” (Michael Moore) and “insurgents . . . fighting for their homeland” (Herbert again).  Incredibly, the Left believes that the moral balance in this struggle tips in favor of the terrorists, not the United States.  How else to explain the New York Times’ decision to run yet another editorial about the “nightmare at Abu Ghraib” the day before last week’s 9/11 anniversary?  Sadly, the same radicals who glorified the Vietcong and accused American troops of committing atrocities during the Vietnam War are at it again.

Despite the bleatings of defeat coming from Kerry and his supporters, in the three years since 9/11 we have disrupted and destroyed large portions of Al Qaeda, prevented additional terrorist attacks in the United States, and freed 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq from the clutches of brutal dictatorships that aided and abetted terrorism.  By any reasonable measure, the war on terror is going extremely well.

But no war is without cost.  Since the war on terror began, 1,200 American troops have been killed.  John Kerry sees this as a tragic milestone; I see it as a heroic sacrifice.  Like the 4,500 Americans killed during the Revolutionary War, the 290,000 killed during World War II, and the 80,000 who died to defeat communism, these 1,200 brave soldiers did not die in vain.  As Abraham Lincoln reminds us, on this third anniversary of 9/11 we must dedicate ourselves to the great task remaining before us, and from these honored dead take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.