Looking at the footage and pictures of a mob in Fallujah, Iraq, burning the bodies of four Americans, dragging them through the streets, and hanging the charred corpses from a bridge, Americans will find it hard not to be reminded of what happened in Mogadishu, Somalia, on October 3 and 4, 1993. There, 18 American soldiers were killed, and the dead body of one was dragged through the street and photographed. President Clinton responded by announcing that America would leave Somalia.

It was a reaction that inspired and emboldened the radical Islamic terrorists who were then and are now determined to defeat the West. As the eminent historian of the Middle East Bernard Lewis notes in his book “The Crisis of Islam,” Osama bin Laden himself cited the Somalia example in a 1998 interview with ABC News. “We have seen in the last decade the decline of the American government and the weakness of the American soldier,” the Qaeda leader and terrorist mastermind said.”This was also repeated in Somalia…After a few blows, they ran in defeat…left, dragging their corpses.”

Yesterday’s carnage was different from Somalia. For one thing, the four killed yesterday weren’t even American soldiers but were apparently, according to press reports, civilian security contractors escorting convoys that deliver food to the Fallujah area. Five American soldiers also died yesterday in a roadside bombing in Iraq.

It will also be different in that America won’t respond by running in defeat. We have a new president, and since September 11, 2001, a new awareness of the terrorists’ objectives. Those who yesterday brutalized the bodies of the Americans who were trying to bring them food weren’t protesting “occupation.” They were attacking America and the West itself, the same way that those who attacked us on September 11, 2001, did. They won’t stop until either they win or they are defeated by America.

There was plenty of reason already for America to expand the war against the terrorists. Regimes in Tehran, Damascus, Cairo, Pyongyang, and Riyadh that support and spawn the terrorists need to be changed. There have been plenty of attacks and threats already that make the case for such a policy.

But if Americans needed any more explanation of the importance of pressing the war against the terrorists and their sponsors to a conclusive victory for the West, they got it yesterday in the images from Fallujah.