The United States is at war, but from the way Americans are acting, you'd never know it. With every report of a terrorist bombing or ambush, while casualty lists grow by the week, Americans are recoiling in horror, as if they expect combat to be a form of pattycake where nobody, except perhaps for the bad guys, gets hurt or killed.

There is a good reason for this. We simply don't understand that this is a real war, a fight to the death, and we can't seem to recognize the fact that wars are brutal things where brutality is the norm.

On September 11, 2001, our enemies declared war on us. They weren't kidding. They told us that we are the great Satan and they are determined to kill us all or enslave us in a Taliban-like Islamic regime because that's what their bellicose deity wants them to do.

The enemy is not stupid. They see our economy as our Achilles heel, and they are striking us where it hurts. In Saudi Arabia they are attacking the wellspring of the world economy – oil - killing or kidnapping the men who keep the oil flowing and Saudi weaponry in firing condition.

In Iraq they are laying siege to the nation's infrastructure, attacking power plants, oil facilities, water plants and doing everything in their power to cripple the economy and destroy the wellbeing of the Iraqi people.

This is a real war - it's just being fought in a way different from the wars we have fought in the past. In Iraq we have established a beachhead in this strange war, and, because the enemy sees it as a beachhead - a new Normandy from which our forces can drive deep into their midst - it is being fiercely resisted.

President Bush has said that America has been thus far spared another tragedy like 9/11 because Afghanistan and Iraq, and not the United States, are the battlegrounds. Should we lose in that area, we can expect the war to be fought here in America.

We seem to have forgotten that at the time of 9/11 the president told the American people this war against international terrorism will last a long, long time, perhaps beyond his lifespan and that of many of his fellow Americans. And because we have forgotten, we are rapidly wearying of the struggle and resenting its cost.

We must keep in mind that strange as it is, this war on terrorism is a war, just as real as World Wars I and II. During those struggles, the American people were forced to make sacrifices both in the standards of living and in the sacrifice of tens of thousands of American lives. At Normandy alone, over 9,000 men died. In a mere 30 or so days, we lost 6,000 Marines on tiny Iwo Jima.

Here at home just about everything was rationed - food, gasoline and other commodities such as meat were scarce. People couldn't buy new cars. Long distance travel by train was restricted by a scarcity of railroad car capacity. And this went on for four years. Yet nobody demanded a quick and easy end to the war that was costing them so much in lives, and in their standard of living. They knew that victory has a price, and they were willing to pay it.

They understood that war is war, and knew what was at stake. When errors in the prosecution of the war were made we understood that the most certain thing about military planning is the uncertainty of the planning of any combat operations. Mistakes will be made - the enemy doesn't always oblige us by acting in a way we want them to act. Nobody demanded an investigation of the Roosevelt administration that because of poor planning, naval and air interdictions against Iwo Jima had failed to prevent the carnage there or the tragic farce that was Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands where thousands of allied troops died.

We had better begin to understand that we face a well-financed, highly intelligent enemy determined to destroy us by any all means available to them. They are not about to quit. They are capable of gutting our economy. Just think about what it will mean if al Qaeda drives out the Saudi monarchy, thus gaining control of the Saudi oil fields - now a very distinct possibility.

Think of what it will mean should the insurgents and their al Qaeda allies destroy Iraq's oil production. South of our borders, Venezuela has threatened to cut off oil shipments to the U.S. And thanks to such demagogues as John Kerry and his lunatic environmentalist allies, America is prevented from exploiting our own oil fields in Alaska's ANWAR and elsewhere.

We are not talking about extravagant gasoline prices and rationing here - we are talking about an economic catastrophe that will bring us and the rest of the West to our knees.This is why we are in Iraq, and why we must stay there until the new Iraqi government is able to defend itself. But even then, the war against terrorism will go on - for perhaps decades to come. We are in the fight of our lives and our very existence as a free and prosperous nation is at stake.

In its deranged religious fanaticism, the enemy believes that our prosperity and material well-being are tools of Satan. Because of this distorted view they are determined to stop us from doing what we set out to do in Iraq - to create a bridgehead from which the American way of life could be brought to the people of the Middle East. To prevent this from happening they will go to any lengths. While we prefer persuasion to make the export of the American dream possible, we first must first win by force of arms.

Exporting that dream can't be won by an advertising or public relations campaign. If we want to prevail we must first adopt what Stonewall Jackson advised after the Battle of Fredericksburg when asked what could be done about those rascally Yankees ( including some of my ancestors) who had destroyed and looted that charming city: "Kill em," he said. "Kill 'em all."

Either that, or be prepared to be killed ourselves.

Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska. He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.