War postponed never becomes easier to fight, or less costly in lives and treasure. And those who mock President Bush as a "cowboy" or even, insanely, claim that America (or "the Jews") staged 9/11 just so we'd have an excuse for war will not, if their views prevail, bring about peace. They will simply bring about far more death.

And if we abandon this war, then a day will almost certainly come when all of us will look back with deep regret to the time when we might have rid the world of the scourge of extremist Muslim terrorism (meanwhile liberating more than a few Muslim nations from tyranny) at the astonishingly slight cost in blood and horror, compared to most wars, that we have paid so far in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But we're Americans. We neither study history nor learn from it.