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It's hard to work up much Christmas jollity when American troops are being killed in Iraq. But this isn't the first Christmas when we've been involved in bloody war, and it probably won't be the last, unhappily.

I remember Christmas 1944. World War II. A few months earlier it looked as if the war against Hitler's Germany was just about over. Gen. George S. Patton had driven his Third Army across France and the Nazi forces were in headlong retreat.

Both Patton and British Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery were prepared to launch a smashing thrust across the Rhine River and into the German heartland. Each general believed he could end the war before winter.

"I'll be Home for Christmas" was a new song in 1944. Many hoped that it would be true.

But Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, commander of the Allied forces in Europe, didn't have enough supplies to support two such drives. Forced to make a choice between Patton and Montgomery, at first Eisenhower chose neither. He opted for a broad offensive across the entire Allied line.

The Germans were given time to recoup and reorganize their shattered armies. In the autumn, Eisenhower consented to Montgomery's daring Operation Market Garden, a thrust through the Netherlands and across the Rhine. It failed, and winter set in.

In December the Nazis launched a counterattack in Belgium, and the Battle of the Bulge ensued. Hampered by atrocious winter snow and fog that prevented Allied planes from supporting our ground troops, our men were battered into retreat. The city of Bastogne was surrounded. The war was far from finished.

Bing Crosby, the most popular star in Hollywood at the time, was on a USO tour of Europe that December. Time and again, the GIs asked him to sing "I'll Be Home for Christmas" and another song that became almost his trademark, "White Christmas." Knowing that many of the kids he was singing to would never again see a Christmas at home, Crosby returned to the States in a deep depression. Some claim he suffered a nervous breakdown.

Patton, the best American general when it came to winning battles, drove his Third Army to the relief of Bastogne. Christmas saw intense fighting and heavy casualties. But Hitler's counter-offensive was stopped and driven back. By May, the war in Europe was over, six or seven months later than it might have been, but much earlier than anyone in Allied headquarters had expected when our troops hit the beaches in Normandy in June 1944.

The point is, as Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman put it, war is hell. War means killing and destruction. War means young men sent to foreign lands to fight, to kill and to be killed.

Deranged though he may have been, Hitler knew that his winter offensive could not possibly destroy the Allied armies on his western front. His goal was to make the Americans and British so weary of fighting and shedding the blood of their best young men that they would settle for a negotiated peace with Germany, leaving him free to turn all of the still formidable German forces against Stalin's Soviet Russia.

That didn't work. Just as the Japanese miscalculated America's willingness to fight in 1941, Hitler badly underestimated the determination of Americans to eliminate the Nazis and their brutal regime. Despite the casualties, despite the blood, Americans kept on fighting. From the teenage GIs in their foxholes to a badly shaken pop singer, from the wheelchair-bound president to 12-year-old kids like myself, there was no thought, not even a hint, that we should cut our losses and settle for less than total victory.

The parallels with this Christmas and the war in Iraq are clear. The military phase of the war ended within a few weeks of its onset. The Iraqi army collapsed and disappeared. Saddam Hussein hid in a hole in the ground until he was ferreted out and brought to trial.

Now we are engaged in a long, difficult, exasperating sort of police action. Like Hitler's 1944 counterattack, our enemies are engaged in an action that is more political than military. They hope that through terror and murder they can make the American people so weary of fighting that we will call our troops back home.

And leave Iraq to murderous rapists like Saddam Hussein and the terrorists who want to prevent democracy from establishing itself in the Middle East.

Compared to the casualties we suffered in 1944's Battle of the Bulge, or on just about any day during World War II, the casualties inflicted upon us in Iraq are pinpricks. Every one of our troops killed or wounded is intolerable, of course, but that toll in blood must be put in perspective.

What are these sacrifices accomplishing?

To judge by the mindless fury of the suicide bombers and other terrorists, we must be accomplishing a lot. The prospect of a Muslim nation freely electing its own government and setting out on the road to democracy is anathema to Muslim fundamentalists. That's why they're willing to kill themselves and so many of their fellow Muslims — men, women and children. Critics of the Iraq war in Washington are demanding that we start to bring our troops home. They claim we have no real strategic plan for winning the war in Iraq.

The truth is, we have already won the war. Now we are fighting to win the peace. There is no war in Iraq, only scattered strikes of vicious violence aimed at getting headlines in the American media and convincing American voters that we should abandon Iraq.

If we allow the terrorists to win in Iraq, we will soon be fighting them elsewhere. Perhaps in Morocco. Perhaps in London. Perhaps in Florida. I'd rather fight them in Iraq. And finish the job there. It'll be a much happier Christmas next year if we do, just as Christmas 1945 was much brighter than the year before.

Naples resident Ben Bova is the author of more than 100 books, including "Mercury," the latest novel in his acclaimed Grand Tour series. Dr. Bova's Web site is www.benbova.net.