In his address to the nation on Thursday in which he outlined his administration's latest approach to terrorism, President Obama said, "Instead of giving into cynicism and division, let's move forward with the confidence and optimism and unity that defines us as a people. For now is not a time for partisanship, it's a time for citizenship. A time to come together and work together." Setting aside the hypocrisy of those words being spoken by one of the harshest and most partisan critics of the Bush administration's prosecution of the War on Terror, let's look at the difference between the left's "cynicism and division" and the right's.

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When those on the left, ably assisted by the mainstream media, criticized former President Bush for acting as if we were at war, for treating enemy combatants like enemy combatants, for periodically reminding the world and the American people that there are those who wish to do us harm, for demanding legislation that allowed those charged with protecting us to do their jobs they sent the message to our allies and enemies that a large segment of the American people didn't have the stomach for the fight. As some of those same people in the 1960's and others like them gave the North Vietnamese hope that the American people lacked the resolve to fight and wanted peace at any cost, that was exactly the kind of hope and change the left was trying to create during the Bush years. And they had some significant successes; the most significant being the election of President Barack Obama.

Regarding the current criticism of President Obama's approach to the war (which according to Thursday's speech we can once again call a war rather than the Overseas Contingency Operation); those who are speaking against the current policies are sending an entirely different message. When Americans speak out against trying the admitted mastermind of the largest battle in that war in a civilian court, when they voice their support for continuing to house enemy combatants in the stronghold at Guantanamo Bay until the war is over, when they demand the same type of vigilance and eye-on-the-ball attention the war received before President Obama came to power they send the message to our allies and enemies that there are plenty of Americans who are willing to stand and fight. Appeasement and naiveté are not the first reaction of every American. Many are not willing to sit quietly, mesmerized into silence and submission by speech after speech, sheep waiting patiently for the slaughter with "the confidence and optimism and unity that defines us as a people".

Bottom line, those who are criticizing the Obama administration's approach to the war on al-Qaida are calling for the defense of our nation, not the capitulation to our enemies in the desperate hope that they will suddenly abandon their desire to destroy us. Current critics want a different kind of hope and change: the hope that our president will change some of his policies and reverse some of his decisions thereby actually doing, as he promised in his recent speech, "whatever it takes to defeat them".