In the meantime, it appears that only our military leaders and politicians on the right truly grasp what we’re facing and what’s at stake. At the very least, they are the only public figures willing to openly articulate what the threat is. And despite the prolonged, herculean efforts of our friends on the left and their allies in a smear-happy media, most Americans still support the push to hunt these holy warrior monsters down where they live instead of waiting for them to come here. Again. We don’t buy into the fallacious “we’re just making more terrorists with our belligerent foreign policy!” canard.

Americans want to be secure, and they’re going to vote for whoever will give them security. We don’t have anything if we don’t have security. Want my vote? Convince me that you’ll work hard at keeping me and mine safe. Right or left, just do it.

Here are a couple of guys who want to do it:

Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, U.S. Central Command:

[The] problem set does not go away if we were victorious tomorrow in either Iraq or Afghanistan.”

There is a large network of these organizations virtually connected in some cases, physically connected in others.”

All share an ideology that wants to turn the clock back 15 centuries and create a global caliphate, he said. “That is clearly the intention of al Qaeda and its associated movements,” Kimmitt said. “It has been said time after time after time.”

And has fallen on many a deaf ear.

President George W. Bush:

If we were not fighting and destroying this enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle. They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our own borders.

You are truly dense—lethally so—if you don’t understand that. If you do understand it, yet you still seek to castigate President Bush through this war, then you are a bad American.

This is not a right or left issue. I don’t care who you vote for, or what your political leanings are. So long as you don’t work toward tearing America down, I will always respect your beliefs. But when anyone, from any part of the political spectrum, starts politicizing my security over cheap pettiness or for personal gain, they have earned my enmity, and that of many Americans. Just watch.