Maybe the Howard Deans and Dennis Kuciniches and Nancy Pelosis of the world are right, for once.

Maybe Iraq is Vietnam all over again.

Who would have thought that just four years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on this country that the opposition party would be calling for an unconditional surrender to the people who attacked us?

Make no mistake about it. That is exactly how a premature withdrawal from Iraq would be viewed and celebrated by the Islamo-fascists of al-Qaida – from Abu Musab Zarqawi in Iraq to Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

Who would have thought that just four years after 3,000 Americans were incinerated by Islamists for no other reason than they were Americans, that the country would be divided over whether to defeat the enemy when they were on the run?

Make no mistake about it. I listen to Iraq war veterans on my radio show every day tell me how we are on the offensive still in Iraq, defeating the terrorist enemy in every engagement, conducting missions that are taking their toll. Just like in Vietnam, we are winning every battle on the field and losing the war at home!

Who would have thought that just two years after this war started, politicians safely ensconced behind anti-terrorist barricades and protected by taxpayer-provided armed security agents at home would still be debating whether we were right to invade Iraq?

Make no mistake about it. I remember the same kind of misinformed debates taking place in 1968. It was demoralizing to our troops in Vietnam and it is equally demoralizing to our troops in Iraq. One Iraq war vet hoping to return for this third tour told me recently: "Please tell the American people not to write us over there about how they support the troops but oppose the war. That really gets us mad. We don't want to hear that message any more. If you're tempted to say that, please do us a favor and shut up." Iraq war soldiers can see through that baloney as easily as Vietnam war soldiers could.

Who would have thought that after all the debate before the war about Saddam Hussein's genocidal rule of Iraq, this use of chemical weapons on his own people, his potential for developing nuclear weapons and putting them in the hands of terrorists and his active cooperation with al-Qaida before 9-11, that Americans would still be arguing about matters of established fact?

Make no mistake about it. That's what we are doing today. Let me make this real simple: Saddam was and is the biggest mass murderer alive on the planet. He had weapons of mass destruction and wanted to build more. He would not have hesitated to put them in the hands of terrorists to use against the United States. He supported terrorism all over the world – including al-Qaida prior to Osama bin Laden's mega-attack on us Sept. 11, 2001. Not only did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction, we captured some of them and brought them home to the United States. Why the Bush administration has not made a better case of articulating the overwhelming facts on these matters, I do not pretend to understand.

I don't know what's wrong with a significant part of the American public. I don't know why, according to one poll, 25 percent of Americans don't think Iraq is better off with Saddam Hussein in leg irons. I don't know why so many Americans aren't sure who is more dangerous – Osama bin Laden or George W. Bush.

But I do know this: Many Americans don't like sacrifice of any kind. They don't have the stomach for war. We need to remember this before we send young men overseas into combat. And we need to hit the enemy hard and with everything we've got and conclude conflicts swiftly and successfully, achieving total victory and bringing our troops home.

Right now, our enemy is just hoping to last through 2008, knowing the strong likelihood that an appeasing Democrat will win the White House and make their day.

So the clock is ticking. We need seem more shock and awe now. We need to take out as many terrorists as we can in the short time left. The Democrats seem determined to relive Vietnam once again.

The United States no more lost the war in Vietnam on the battlefield than we could possibly lose the war in Iraq on the battlefield.

We lost the war in Vietnam right here at home because politicians, the media and anti-American protesters – many of them funded and directed by the Soviet Union and cultivated by the Communist North Vietnamese – attacked the country's will to fight. And the Democrats capitulated. The Democrats appeased. The Democrats, all too often, sided with the enemy.

Vietnam all over again? In a sense, politicians like Kerry and Dean and Pelosi are fulfilling their own prophecy when they call Iraq another Vietnam. Even some of the names are the same. John Kerry was calling American soldiers "monsters" back then. As a U.S. senator today, he is only slightly more circumspect.

But Vietnam was not really a matter of national security for the United States. It meant the lives of millions in Southeast Asia, but it only meant demoralization here in the U.S. While defending millions of Vietnamese from annihilation and communist oppression was a noble cause, the fight against Islamic terrorists is much bigger. It's a matter of national survival. It's a matter of saving the lives of millions of Americans. It's a matter of preserving the USA and all for which it stands.

America dare not get squishy in this fight. If we do, Osama bin Laden will have won.

It will not bring us peace if we run from Iraq. It will bring us more terror – terror on a scale we cannot imagine, terror that will make Sept. 11, 2001, seem like a footnote in history.