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Herding into the streets of various cities across America, leftist activists gathered last weekend to collectively denounce the Bush administration and the war in Iraq.

Though they attempt to hide their real agenda behind a cloak of humanitarianism, the actual goal of these self-proclaimed advocates of “peace” is not peace at all. They seek instead to undermine the only means available to achieve peace: self-defense.

In the twisted view of the protestors, all war is evil, no matter who started it or why. In their eyes, all violence – whether in self-defense, or with malicious initiation – is equally condemnable.

But the issue is not the simple dichotomy between those who deny the basic right to self-defense (the left) and those who advocate that we sacrifice ourselves – and our troops – to protect the world (the right).

The only way to lead the war successfully is to recognize the fundamental principles involved and apply them to the situation in Iraq specifically and the region more generally.

Fundamentally, the right of each individual to his own life is paramount. When someone’s right to his life is violated by an attacker, he necessarily has the right to defend himself by any means.

When an entire society is targeted by foreign attackers, the job of the government is to defend the citizens, to be the agent of their self-defense.

For decades before Sept. 11, 2001, the United States had been consistently attacked by a radical faction of Islam that only grew in popularity after decades of our halfhearted responses.

But in the world of Islamic terrorism, Iran is our most dangerous enemy. Since the inception of the anti-U.S. Islamist movement in the early 1960s, Iran has been the main sponsor, both financially and ideologically, of terrorism against the United States.

From the Iranian hostage crisis of the ’70s to the current president’s open support of terrorist organizations to their nuclear weapons programs, Iran is the most dangerous enemy the United States faces.

In the necessary task of defending itself, America has the absolute right to use whatever means it deems necessary against whatever target it finds most appropriate.

The United States’ choice to fight Iraq, an indirect sponsor of terrorism in the United States, is surely poor military strategy, but it is not cause for withdrawal.

In order to win the war, we must recognize not only our absolute right to self-defense, but also the evil of sacrificing our troops for any other purpose.

Rather than engage in safe aerial attacks and carpet-bombings of known terrorist centers, our troops have been sent to die fighting expensive and time-consuming ground battles aimed at reducing civilian casualties. This is just as much a negation of our right to self-defense as the left has ever offered.

We are not the aggressors in this war, we are the victims. Our World Trade Center was attacked. Our embassies were bombed. Our soldiers were killed. All casualties resulting from the war rest squarely on the shoulders of our attackers.

Such was our mindset in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By acting only to win the war quickly and save our troops, lives were saved and the war was ended quickly and decisively. In the end, even Japan was better off for it and is now a thriving economic powerhouse.

Our self-sacrificial attempts to reduce civilian casualties at the expense of our own soldiers must be regarded as the same evil as the demands of the protestors, for they are two faces of the same beast – one that can only be defeated by unabashedly asserting our right to exist and implementing the decisive attacks that make our defense possible.

Hurst is the chairman of L.O.G.I.C.