The grotesque photos of the Hussein brothers splashed across television screens in July served as a reminder -- the United States cannot go soft if it intends to win the war on terror.

It was hard to look at the mangled faces of the ruthless killers, but their deaths bring U.S. forces one step closer to completing the mission in Iraq.  A welcome relief after the loss of too many American soldiers.  Still, the Iraq war that was supposed to be a quagmire was more of a cakewalk.

But cleaning up even the last remnants of the Hussein regime will not be the end of the campaign against terrorism declared by President Bush on Sept. 11, 2001.  No battle for safety and freedom comes without a great and extended price.

America should know.  The years following victory in its war for independence saw internal conflict in establishing the new government, while a crippling depression brought the U.S. economy to its knees.

And within a generation of Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown, the young nation’s very existence was again threatened.  Flames burst forth from the White House, and President Madison was forced to flee Washington as British troops set the capital ablaze.  Soldiers once again took up arms to keep their nation free.

Indeed, freedom is never a one-fight process.  The birth of the United States took resilience, patience and unfortunately many lives.  Is it any surprise that battling terrorism requires the same?

Yet after watching some of the naysayers lament our attacks in Afghanistan and in Iraq, I come to wonder whether we’ll have the heart to finish the job.  Certainly the previous administration didn’t.

Islamist terrorists began their assault against America when we were barely rid of the Cold War threat.  Saddam Hussein scorned U.S. demands from the day Bush I and Congress let him off the hook in 1991, and al-Qaeda has resurfaced again and again since its first attack against the United States in 1993 at the World Trade Center.

Clinton responded by lobbing a few missiles into Afghanistan and Sudan on occasion.  He offered the same solution when Saddam Hussein booted weapons inspectors from Iraq in 1998.  “Instead of the inspectors disarming Saddam, Saddam has disarmed the inspectors,” Clinton told the nation.  “This situation presents a clear and present danger to the stability of the Persian Gulf and the safety of people everywhere.”

That danger was apparently not enough to warrant a large-scale assault to erase the threat.  And now that the attack has finally come, some members of Congress are hiding behind their chairs and throwing pathetic accusations against the president’s motives for war.  They should be rejoicing with the rest of us that a terrorist regime has met its long-overdue demise.

Instead, while Iraqi citizens celebrated the expulsion of their fallen tyrant, Bush’s opponents were drawing up their own battle plans to discredit the war effort.

Probably the most ridiculous of these counterattacks has come in the zealous confrontation over Bush’s now-infamous “16 words.”  Pundits and politicians have hurled heinous accusations of deceit at the president over a single, obscure sentence that will most likely turn out to be accurate.  British prime minister Tony Blair has not backed away from his intelligence reports which the president credited in his claims against Iraq.

Bush says of the Saddam loyalists, “Bring ‘em on,” and he’s reprimanded for provoking the insurgents.  (Did they really need provocation?)  Special Forces eliminate the heirs to the Iraqi dictatorship, and Charles Rangel complains that they were targeted unfairly while Howard Dean whines about “ends” and “means.”  Perhaps our soldiers should have killed them more nicely.

If only our enemies were so sensitive.  Imagine if the men and women of our armed forces were this half-hearted.  On second thought, please don’t.

There’s nothing the least bit tragic about the deaths of the brothers Hussein or the liberation of Iraq, and we must refuse to let liberal finger-pointers shame our military for their successful work.

Admittedly -- and without apology -- America’s greatness comes because of her goodness, her respect for law and civility.  But righteousness cannot be equated with weakness.  Our country will survive the terrorist threat the same way we fended off England in the post-Revolution days and the same way we made it through the standoff against the Soviet Union -- through strength, resolve and leadership.

We’ve got the strength and we now have the leadership.  Time will tell if we have the resolve.
 

This article was originally published on Townhall.com.