Senator Clinton recently introduced a bill reminding us that there are many veterans alive today who made significant sacrifices to defend our liberties even though they never saw combat. The junior senator from New York is sponsoring the Cold War Medal Act of 2005 to create a military award for those who served honorably between September 2, 1945, and December 26, 1991. A companion bill has already been introduced in the House of Representatives, and a section of the recently passed House version of the armed forces appropriation bill requires the Pentagon to perform a preparatory study of the matter.

This bill comes at an important time. Almost 16 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is easy to forget that there was a time not so long ago when the outcome of the Cold War couldn’t be taken for granted. Some even forget the evils of communism itself (witness the current vogue for T-shirts displaying “CCCP,” the Russian abbreviation of “USSR”), even as some never appreciated the problem to begin with or didn’t think it was a problem in the first place.

No matter, the fact is now clear that for much of the 20th century, the Kremlin camarilla posed a serious threat to the free world. The communist regimes seeded our country with agents committed to undermining America’s core values of free markets and free people. When the Soviet party boss, Nikita Khrushchev, told Western diplomats in 1956, “We will bury you,” it was no idle threat. To face that danger, America asked much of its military, and many responded to the call over the years.

The struggle broke into open conflict on the Korean peninsula and in Vietnam. But much of the time, the Cold War was a twilight struggle, fought by airmen on base in Germany or by sailors on submarine patrol in the Pacific or by soldiers keeping watch over missile silos in the American Midwest. These posts might have been unglamorous, but they were vital nonetheless. As Rep. Robert Andrews, sponsor of the House bill, puts it: “What happened [during the Cold War] was extremely consequential, and the people who served in that period deserve recognition.”

It’s hard to imagine a more meaningful time to bestow this recognition than our current time, when America finds itself in the early years of yet another global struggle with consequences that are existential. Mr. Andrews and Mrs. Clinton deserve credit for their efforts to honor those Americans who secured for us the victory in our earlier war against fierce ideological enemies. The honorees will be role models for the new generation now stepping up to the fight.