Arthur Herman on the lessons of Iwo Jima:

Yet even this valor and sacrifice is not the full story of what Iwo Jima means, or what Rosenthal’s immortal photograph truly symbolizes. The lesson of Iwo Jima is in fact an ancient one, going back to Machiavelli: that sometimes free societies must be as tough and unrelenting as their enemies. Totalitarians test their opponents by generating extreme conditions of brutality and violence; in those conditions–in the streets and beheadings of Fallujah or on the beach and in the bunkers of Iwo Jima–they believe weak democratic nerves will crack. This in turn demonstrates their moral superiority: that by giving up their own decency and humanity they have become stronger than those who have not.