I'm not good at anniversaries. Or holidays for that matter. Five years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, I don't really want to spend my time looking backward. CNN is streaming that tragic day's coverage over the Internet in real-time, but I've little desire to watch it. I've got the TV tuner card in my computer recording every 9/11-related show, but I've yet to watch any of them. I should watch them. I should have my memories of that day refreshed regularly. But I'm just not there yet.

Five years ago today, nearly 3,000 people lost their lives in the terrorist attacks in New York, at the Pentagon and in that Pennsylvania field. I watched a few minutes of one show while flipping channels last night that said that 10,000 children lost at least one parent in the attacks.

It's become cliche nowadays to mark 9/11 as the day America was awakened from its post-Cold War slumber. What is tragic is that it took nearly 3,000 lives lost to awaken us. The 1993 World Trade Center Bombing didn't do it. The Khobar Towers bombing didn't do it. The African Embassy bombings didn't do it. The USS Cole bombing didn't do it.

You can go back even further in time -- to the 1979 American Embassy takeover in Iran. Embassy grounds are sovereign territory, yet we sat on our hands as Americans were held hostage for 444 days. Then there was the American Marine Corps barracks bombing in Lebanon in 1983 -- we left there bloodied and beaten.

I don't like looking back because there is still work to do. There is still a war that needs to be won.

For most of you who read this blog, I've written nothing here that isn't as obvious to you as the nose on your face. But there's a far too large portion of the population that still doesn't really "get" 9/11.

You've got people like Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) who think the world would be better off if Saddam Hussein were still running Iraq. (For background on Rockefeller's duplicity, see this Classic Hoystory post or this more recent post by Captain Ed.)

You've got people like Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) who point to the U.S. withdrawal from Lebanon after the Marine Corps barracks bombing and our withdrawal from Somalia after the Black Hawk Down tragedy as examples President Bush should follow in Iraq -- ignoring that those two events are ones that Osama bin Laden said demonstrated to him America's weakness and emboldened his fateful attack.

You've got people like Democrat candidate Francine Busby who, two days before the 9/11 attacks, reads a "mock" letter from Osama bin Laden. Unwittingly -- obviously -- Busby's Osama sounds a lot like any number of Democrats running for office.

“If you ask me if your country is safer today, I must say, 'No.' Much of the world abhors and condemns me and my followers for our acts of violence and terror, but they also condemn you for the use of unprovoked military force, torture, secret prisons and disregard for the Geneva Conventions and human rights. You have done much to damage the moral standing of the United States of America, more than I could ever have hoped for.”

Because when bin Laden attacked us five years ago today, he wasn't really interested in killing as many Americans as possible, he just wanted to damage our "moral standing." That Busby could write this mock letter shows just how out of touch she is with the danger we face.

No, there are far too many people in this country who don't really believe we're fighting a war. Because they believe we're not really in a war, any comparisons to World War II or the Cold War are odious to them, but that's probably where the best comparisons to what we face today reside. In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot, Bush compared himself to Harry S Truman.

Mr. Bush is an avid reader of history, and he has a contest with political aide Karl Rove to see who reads the most books. ("I'm losing," Mr. Bush says.) So I ask him if any current Democrat could play the role that Republican Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan played in helping Harry Truman establish new policies in the 1940s at the dawn of the Cold War.

Notably, he talks about Truman first. "I doubt Truman would have been able to predict how long the Cold War would last, but I applaud Truman for beginning to wage the Cold War" -- pregnant pause -- "for which he was very unpopular, for which the country was viewed as polarized." He never does mention a contemporary Vandenberg, and in truth the only one I can think of is Joe Lieberman, of late and by necessity not a Democrat but an "independent."

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The Truman reference is nonetheless revealing, because it suggests that perhaps Mr. Bush has begun to realize he will get little credit for his Middle East policies during his own presidency. His critics on the left in particular want to portray him as another LBJ, forlorn over a misbegotten war, and destined for historical disdain because of it. But Mr. Bush hardly resembles the LBJ who more or less came to agree with his Vietnam critics. He seems far more like Truman, both in his personal combativeness and also in his conviction that his vindication will come down the road.

I'm certainly not one of the Republican party apparatchiks who is going to praise every move President Bush has made -- but I think he has done a far better job than any of his political opponents has promised to do.

There are debates to be had in the war on terror. Should we should've gone into Iraq in the first place? Should we send more troops to Iraq to keep the peace, or would more troops lead to more violence? What should we do about Lebanon? Syria? Iran? North Korea?

The problem is that these serious debates only seem to take place within the Republican Party.

Democrats largely are clinging to sick, twisted beliefs -- that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney plotted 9/11, that Bush purposefully falsified intelligence to go to war with Iraq so he could avenge Saddam Hussein's assassination plot against Bush 41, that Bush is using his commander-in-chief powers to illegally spy on his political opponents -- and they just can't be part of the serious debates in this country.

Frankly, the Republican Party and the nation as a whole are weaker because of it. Instead of serious efforts to make each and every American safer and ensure victory in what will be a long war on Islamofascist terrorism, Democrats demogogue wherever and whenever they find an opportunity.

Five years after Sept. 11, 2001, remember that we're still fighting and American soldiers -- and those of our allies -- are still dying in an effort to make the world a safer place for everyone.

Remember the cost of ignorance.

Remember the cost of complacency.

Remember.