No poor words of mine, struggling to express my appreciation for those who have given their lives for our country, could ever compete with those offered by Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg in 1863. At the dedication ceremony for the new cemetery there, he tried to put into words his belief that those who give their lives in the cause of freedom leave those who remain with the solemn duty to ensure that the sacrifice was not in vain. In the end, some greater good must be served by war in order to fulfil that duty.

That concept means even more today, in a war where the enemy deliberately targets innocent civilians, and none of us can be completely safe until all of us are made safer. Though some try to separate the war in Iraq from the rest of the War on Terror for ideological reasons, even they cannot deny that our military brought freedom and hope to millions, there and in Afghanistan. The entire Middle East is undergoing a dramatic change for the better, because of what they did there. We owe it to those who have died not to turn our backs on the cause for which they fought, or the people they freed.

Every time some newsreader, pundit, politician or protester counts the number of our dead in Iraq, they ignore those who have died in Afghanistan, and they ignore what all those men and women -- living and dead -- have done for the region as a whole. War has a price, but it also achieves an aim. They hope to use that number to instill despair and defeat, but it should only make us more determined to see this thing through -- to continue fighting tyranny with democracy, oppression with freedom, and terror with hope. To do otherwise would dishonor their memory. Abraham Lincoln understood that their memory must be honored, and that their loss must bring determination.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

- Abraham Lincoln