A great piece by Jeff Jacoby on the appalling silence of the Democrats in the war against militant Islam: Democrats’ silence on jihad is deadly. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)

They’re going to get us all killed.

For McCain, a Republican presidential hopeful, the struggle against the Islamists is the paramount issue of the day. His campaign website, while spare, highlights a recent speech in which McCain called stopping radical Islam “our most important moral obligation.” He described the jihadists as “moral monsters but … also a disciplined, dedicated movement driven by an apocalyptic religious zeal, which celebrates martyrdom and murder.”

Sounding nearly as resolute is former governor Mitt Romney, whose campaign website puts “Defeating the Jihadists” first in its list of key campaign issues. “The jihadists are waging a global war against the United States and its allies,” Romney is quoted as saying, “with the ambition of replacing legitimate governments with a caliphate — a theocracy.” Speaking in Israel yesterday, Romney asserted that “a central purpose of NATO should be to defeat radical Islam,” through means both military and ideological.

The Democratic candidates, by contrast, are virtually silent on the subject.

Barack Obama launched his exploratory committee with an online video that mentioned the economy, healthcare, vanishing pensions, college costs, and the fractiousness of partisan politics. His only nod to national security was a passing reference to the war in Iraq, which he opposes. But 9/11 and its aftermath? The worldwide jihad? The global conflict between democratic freedom and Taliban-style repression? Not a word.

Hillary Clinton’s highly praised kickoff video likewise included nothing about the overriding threat of our time. Her website does contain a speech she gave at the Council on Foreign Relations last October, but it is filled with vague rhetoric about diplomacy and international conferences and how we must address the “troubled conditions terrorists seek out.” New Yorkers don’t need to be told “that we are in a war against terrorists who seek to do us harm,” Clinton says. But if she recognizes that the future of the civilized world depends on winning that war, she shows little sign of it.

What is true of Obama and Clinton is more or less true of Edwards, Richardson, and the others. The Democrats seem prepared to emulate John Kerry, who insisted in 2004 that “we have to get back to the place we were” before 9/11. Back, that is, to treating Islamist terrorism not as “the focus of our lives,” but merely as “a nuisance” that we need “to reduce” — like gambling, he said, or prostitution.