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certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.
    After the murders of thousands of good Americans like George Howard, the responsibility of preventing another terrorist attack would soon fall on young military leaders like Brendan Looney and Travis Manion.
    As the stirring speech concluded, many of the Naval Academy midshipmen were applauding along with the politicians onthe screen. Brendan and Travis sat quietly next to each other, reflecting on the enormous challenge that they and their peers now faced.
    Thirty miles from the US Capitol, where the commander-in-chief spoke into the shadows of a devastated city and country, a young generation heard its call to arms.

2

    EARN IT
    I n October 2001, with the US military preparing to invade Afghanistan and the stakes for Travis and Brendan suddenly much higher, their frequent runs became even more intense. On their seemingly endless routes, one would always challenge the other to go further.
    As they ran through the academy’s heavily guarded campus, Travis asked Brendan which branch he hoped to serve in.
    â€œI’ll probably go Navy,” Brendan responded. “What about you?”
    â€œMarine Corps. . . . I hope to go that route,” Travis said, knowing that becoming a Marine Corps officer like his dad was far from guaranteed.
    â€œI hear ya,” Brendan said. “With the way things are going, I can’t even imagine what will be going on when we graduate.”
    â€œWho the hell knows,” Travis said.
    Letters laced with anthrax had just been discovered in post offices in Florida, New York, and Washington, DC. One chilling message was sent to Tom Brokaw, the eminent NBC News anchor:
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  09–11–01
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  This is next
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Take Penacilin Now
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Death to America
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Death to Israel
    Like the rest of America, which worried about everything from more hijackings and anthrax to a nuclear suitcase bomb being detonated in a major city, Annapolis was gripped by fear. Because the Navy campus was full of future military leaders, authorities believed the academy could be a prime target for terrorists planning to make another grand statement while also achieving an important wartime objective.
    Travis and Brendan’s class of 2004 still had time to prepare, but the graduating class of 2002 was only months away from going to war, which had changed the entire campus mind-set.
    On the first Saturday of December 2001, with American bombs pummeling the mountainous region of Tora Bora near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding, President Bush entered the Navy football locker room at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. In just a few minutes, the Midshipmen would square off against their West Point counterparts. Even though Navy was winless and Army had prevailed in just two contests going into the season’s final game, the 2001 matchup, held as Ground Zero still smoldered less than three months after 9/11, was one of the most significant Army-Navy games ever played.
    Standing a few feet from Brendan, the president thanked Navy’s coach after being presented with a football autographed by all members of the team. After a few words of encouragement and a handshake with his former GOP presidential primary rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, President Bush headed over to the Army locker room, where Operation Desert Storm hero and West Point graduate General Norman Schwarzkopf was meeting with the Army squad.
    The president, who had taken office less than a year earlier after one of the closest elections in American history, was in hisfirst weeks as a wartime commander-in-chief. But in his address to the Army players, he left no doubt that the war on terrorism, as his administration called the new