It is almost unbelievable to me that just a short four weeks after some 6,000 people, including many of our fellow Americans were senselessly slaughtered in New York City by an enemy of our way of life, there are people among us who are protesting our nation’s plan to strike at the heart of this evil, this group who call themselves al-Qaida.

Perhaps these people have not studied history. Perhaps they do not know that the “peace” for which they chant is not an automatic benefit of being a human being. Or perhaps they want, as did their kind during earlier times of strife, peace at any cost. Perhaps they, like Neville Chamberlain, who as Prime Minister of England, spoke with Adolph Hitler and came home to England declaring “peace in our time” as a result of promises made to him by that most evil of warlords, the master of the Third Reich. Those promises were not worth the hot air it took to utter them. Bullies everywhere are emboldened by weakness in the targets of their bullying.

Did the Poles find “peace” under Hitler’s domination? Or the people of Czechoslovakia? Or France?

I think not. I believe they found, rather, unending tragedy.

Or perhaps those who chant peace are doing so because of their religious beliefs. Perhaps they believe that war is never justified, for any reason. If so, are they ready to give up that religious freedom that allows them to believe as they wish? Perhaps they are not aware that those religious freedoms they prize so highly came to us as a nation only after a bitter struggle that began in 1776 when some colonists were willing to fight, and even to die, to win those and other freedoms for themselves, their families and their children.

Peace, throughout history, was a shadowy concept at best. There was no peace in the lands dominated by the emperors of Rome. There was no peace in the territory that lay under the thumb of Gengus Khan, or even Henry VIII, King of England. Those who had any kind of peace were either dead or were willing to bow down low before their lords and masters. It has only been in recent history that people developed a new concept of peace, linked to liberty and freedom, and more importantly, linked to an eternal vigilance and a will to fight anyone who tried to take those precious rights away from them.

Our peace is threatened now, perhaps as never before. Our peace, and all those other things that go with it, like the right to live where we wish, the right to associate with whom we wish, is threatened by an unseen enemy who hides in the shadows and strikes at the heart of our way of life.

We cannot bargain with this enemy, this al-Qaida, or even the Taliban who offer them protection, for peace. We cannot plead with them to let us keep our freedoms. We cannot bow down before them and hope for their mercy, for they have none. Their only offering to us is mayhem and murder. We must do as we did recently with the threat to our society from the former Soviet Union. We must meet threats of force with strength and the will to stand tall to the new bullies of this world. We must prove ourselves up to the task of taking on this enemy whose treachery has caused us great grief.

To do otherwise is to be willing to sacrifice so much that has been won in so many long, difficult struggles. Can those women among the peace protestors really believe that the enemy we now face would allow them to keep the freedoms they now have, the freedoms that in some cases have been won for American women after long and difficult struggles against great odds, won by other women willing to struggle for what was right?

What kind of freedom do the women in the land of the Taliban have?

And what would this new enemy think of our freedom of religion? This enemy who threatens to execute Christians for the “crime” of spreading their beliefs among others?

And can anyone really imagine this enemy allowing marchers to parade in the streets of a land dominated by them, shouting “peace”? Protest is not allowed in such places and those guilty of protest are usually not given the luxury of a trial before being executed.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, these protesters believe that this hidden enemy is done with their assault on our way of life. That after killing 6,000 they are satisfied, ready to call it quits.

Would they bet their lives on that?

Or do they have a number of dead which they, the protestors, will tolerate before being stirred to take action? And what is that number of Americans who can be sacrificed to ‘peace’? Is it 10,000? Twenty thousand? More? Will they still cry for ‘peace’ after a city of 100,000 has been wiped out? At what point do we stand up and say “enough”?

I believe that point has been passed. I believe that when the first American was killed that point was passed. I believe the time has come to put our own lives on the line in a struggle for those virtues which we hold sacred. We have done this before all too often. We will be called on to do it again, sadly. But the moment we decide as a nation that we will no longer fight for what we believe, we will cease to believe. We will cease to be free. We will be like the protesters, those freeloaders, who accept the freedom won for them by the millions who died for that freedom which they now so abuse. We will become dependent on some greater power to give us the rights for which we are no longer willing to fight.

I hope that moment never comes, for if it does, it will be the end of our way of life. The dark ages have come back to this earth.

James Williamson is a retired senior research chemist who lives in Lincolnville.