This coming Sunday will mark the fourth anniversary of 9/11, the most ambitious, bloodiest, and most horrific solitary act of terrorism in the history of the United States and the world. Like the Kennedy assassination in 1963, I believe we can all recall vividly where we were and what we were doing the precise moment word reached us that two planes had crashed into the Twin Towers in an apparent act of terrorism against the United States. The images of carnage, destruction, and death forever embedded in our subconscious. I have no doubt that many of us that fateful morning did our best to go about our daily lives as if nothing had happened when in reality our minds were on the events taking place on the East Coast of the country and nothing else.

In the four years' time following the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., the United States has made significant progress in the war against terrorism. Through cooperative arrangements made with the nations which constitute the Coalition of the Willing and the North Alliance, we were able to bring down the repressive Taliban government of Afghanistan, the home base of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, forcing him on the run, and transitioning the once desolate Middle East nation into a new era of freedom and democracy of which they have previously known little.

Nearly two-thirds of al-Qaeda's operatives have either been captured or killed by the United States and its allies. This, however, does not immediately constitute a sign that victory is on the horizon. A predator, though badly injured and afraid, can remain a dangerous threat to our security as the attacks in Madrid and London have demonstrated. Issues of racial profiling at airport security checkpoints and border control, specifically in Mexico, need to be addressed and dealt with directly in order to ensure the safety of the American public.

Operation Iraqi Freedom has fulfilled the affirmation laid out by President George W. Bush that we will not distinguish between the terrorists themselves and the countries who harbor them. Saddam Hussein has long since been accused of hoarding chemical and biological weapons of warfare, all of which were banned by the United Nations, and not once in the 12 years following his surrender at the conclusion of the Persian Gulf War did he ever fulfill the obligations set down for him. Despite what the left may otherwise claim, the 9/11 Commission Report proved there was sufficient evidence to suggest a developing relationship between Saddam Hussein and the country of Iraq and the terrorist organization al-Qaeda, though certainly not directly in connection with the events which took place on 9/11. Two years after the invasion, much work still lies ahead of us and the Iraqi people.

We must repeatedly remind ourselves that the United States is in this war for the long haul. The war against terrorism will be a long, demanding and, most importantly, bloody conflict but one which is necessary to ensure the survival of the principles and values of democracy and freedom throughout the world as the struggles against Nazism and Communism were before our time.

No longer do we live in the era of Bill Clinton where we can fire a $2 million missile and claim we did something to combat the forces of Islamic fascism. No longer can we further rely on the rest of the world to solve our problems for us.

We as nation must make the transition back to a time when we did things not because they were easy but because they were right and just, no matter the inconvenience they may impose on us.

We must never lose sight of the transcendental goal yet to be accomplished in this war, the destruction of al-Qaeda and the end of fundamental Islamic fascism throughout the world. We must never give in to despair; we must never lose our hope of victory even when times are grim.

The moment we do so is the exact same moment in which our enemies will have tasted victory, a moment I pray will never come.

This viewpoint was published in The Marquette Tribune on September 8, 2005.