CRUSADER IN CHIEF:

When al-Qaida attacked America, only a few months into Bush's presidency, I had just begun my freshman year of college.

One of the things I remember most from that formative period of my life is people who had voted for Al Gore saying, "Thank God George Bush is president." As time passes, I believe that's what people will remember.

AFTER 9/11, experts said it was "not a question of if but when" another such attack would occur. But it didn't. That's quite astounding for a country like the US which has so many vulnerabilities, as illustrated so recently by the Boston Marathon bombings. Given massive terror attacks around the world, organized Islamic terrorists certainly haven't lost interest, but instead failed in their attempts to attack the US.

They failed because president Bush committed the United States to a seemingly unwinnable war which had to be waged all over the world against not only people but against an idea itself. Bush brought the fight to the enemy with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and military operations everywhere. Bank accounts were frozen. The Patriot Act was enacted. An ultimatum was issued to states that harbored, funded and tolerated terrorists that they were "either with us or against us."

A more polite, defensive strategy of hiding behind the oceans and peeking out to launch tomahawk missiles or to conduct limited humanitarian campaigns could not have succeeded and would have emboldened the terrorists further, giving proof to their claim that America was a paper tiger. With his aggressive strategy, Bush not only reminded the world that the US is a sleeping giant enemies should think twice before awakening, but kept America safe.

President Bush also infused the War on Terror with America's founding vision, the spread of liberty. As historian Gordon Wood has noted, in revolting against British rule, Americans saw themselves as leading a "worldwide struggle for the salvation of liberty itself." In its global struggles of the past hundred years, America brought its vision of liberty to bear. [...]

Believing that a region of the world which is in many ways stuck in the 7th century would embrace Anglo-American liberalism may have been overambitious, but affirming that Americans were fighting a just cause in keeping with their core principles was important for fighting the War on Terror and for how America continues to perceive itself.

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