In USA Today, retired Air Force general Richard Myers was quoted as saying, “the outcome and consequences of defeat [in Iraq] are greater than World War II.”

He went on to say Iraq is the current battlefield in the war on terror, and Americans “tend to forget” the threat al-Qaida and Islamic fascists pose.

I couldn’t agree more. September 11 seems like a long time ago and there hasn’t been another attack on American soil since that day, so many Americans have forgotten the danger. We cannot afford to forget or ignore the hazards radical Islamists pose to us.

Last week, in an attempt to remind Americans of the danger, President Bush gave a bold, powerful speech in which he stated sacrifice and commitment are needed to defeat a determined enemy. President Bush addressed three important themes.

He said terrorists “hit us and expect us to run. They expect us to repeat the sad history of Mogadishu in 1993.”

As stated on The Rush Limbaugh Show, it is an overlooked fact Osama Bin Laden often sites Mogadishu as proof Americans will run when they see casualties.

After seeing American casualties caused by ruthless war lords in Mogadishu, President Clinton did what any fine leader would have done. He cut and ran instead of engaging the enemy.

Bush made clear he will not cut and run only to let the enemy become emboldened. Americans need to realize running from the terrorists will only make them stronger.

Casualties are a sad fact of war, yet if we let them get to us, the terrorists will win. We are stronger than Clinton made us out to be in 1993.

Bush stated, “hatred of the radicals existed before Iraq was an issue and it will exist when Iraq is no longer an excuse. The government of Russia did not support Operation Iraqi Freedom, and yet militants killed more than 180 Russian school children in Beslan.”

This is a sad truth of the Western world. Appeasing or ignoring growing threats takes precedent over confronting them and often those who ignored the problem get hit anyway.

The world tends to let evil fester and grow like it did with the Third Reich, the U.S.S.R. and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

While it is true the United States helped Saddam gain power, this did not give him the right to abuse and misuse it by killing, raping and pillaging his own people. The same applies to Afghanistan.

At least America has the moral compass to fix its own mistakes. There have been blunders but the future is important, not the past.

Many Americans, especially those on the left, ask why we don’t just reason with the terrorists. Surely there is some sort of compromise, they say. Not so, said the president. “We are not facing a set of grievances that can be addressed,” he said.

Their only aim is to kill as many “infidels” as possible. The extremists don’t care about anything we can give them. They want us dead, plain and simple.

Many have decried Iraq as a quagmire, including the greatest military expert on the planet, Bill Clinton. Iraq is only a quagmire if we let it become one, if we forget why we fight.

The president reminded us of the long struggle we have ahead of us. A struggle we must and will win, unless we lose our will to fight. That cannot happen.

As Edmund Burke once said, “the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.