The terrorists can’t win.

It’s impossible for them to succeed because their idea of victory is suppression of thought and oppression of body.

They can’t win because their means are crude and reckless and treat man and woman and child and soldier and disabled and Christian and Muslim and American and non-American alike, as though they are little more than pawns on a chessboard battlefield.

They can’t win because their ideas were birthed in insanity, their goal evil. The entire history of the world has proved that evil might march, might even inflict harm, but it never can win. Never.

The terrorists can’t win. But we could lose if we aren’t careful, if we aren’t steadfast in the face of bombings such as those that occurred this month in London and those that inevitably will visit our soil again.

We can lose if we cower to their tactics or allow their empty rhetoric to make us fearful.

We can lose if we forget this game began long before Iraq and Afghanistan, if we forget about the USS Cole or the 1993 Twin Towers attack in New York or the bombings at the U.S. embassies in Africa – or the suicide bombers in Israel and the massacre in Rwanda and the reign of the Nazis and of the genocide in Sudan.

What happened in London on July 7 and in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, is nothing new, no matter how much they hurt, no matter how much they shock, no matter how many lives are lost or how many bodies and minds are broken.

We can lose if we ignore the fight, if we run from it, if we try to appease those bent on killing, or if we allow only anger and revenge to guide us.

We can lose if we get sucked into the belief that the terrorists are in this for the long haul, that they always have someone else willing to sacrifice their life as a suicide bomber or will find it easy to recruit the next Osama bin Laden. Because we are in this for the long haul and can always find the next soldier or hero to sacrifice themselves to beat back evil, because we will always be able to find the next person willing to love when evil demands hate.

Because our goals are different. We are bent on spreading peace, freedom, democracy. We are bent on reminding the whole of the world about the truth: that good always triumphs, that it isn’t just a cliche Hollywood movie ending. Because evil only acts out of desperation while good always acts with resolve.

That’s why the terrorists can’t win. But if we forget that, we can lose.