To most of us, the two thousandth combat death in Iraq was a tragedy. For the anti-war movement, however, it has been just another press opportunity. Forget the fact that those deaths, however tragic, still don’t equal all the non-combat deaths in the war in Korea (2,830 between 1950-53) or in other crucial conflicts in American history. Forget the fact that it would still take another thousand lost lives to equal all the Americans who perished in what was the opening battle of this war on terror, Al Qaeda’s attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

Instead, groups such as the American Friends Service Committee, EPIC, and Cindy Sheehan’s Military Families Speak Out use the death toll as a way to undermine the moral basis for war in Iraq and Afghanistan. They cloak their protests in the mantle of “the peace movement,” and its most potent and revered figure, Mohandas Gandhi. Gandhi’s grandson Arum, who is also U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Anan’s human rights adviser, spoke at her most recent rally in Washington. The Village Voice has even compared Cindy Sheehan to Gandhi. The implicit message is that no one would be more opposed to this war than the Mahatma.

Or would he? Despite Gandhi’s personal belief in non-violence, he also believed that democracies sometimes have to act with armed force, and that its citizens have a positive duty to support that effort. His life and writings totally contradicts the standard meek and mild image of Mohandas Gandhi. Especially after the terror bombings in New Delhi last weekend, he would probably be more an ally of George Bush than the peace demonstrators want you to know.

Few know, for example, that Gandhi proudly served in the 1906 Zulu Rebellion and in the Boer War, when he helped carry out wounded British soldiers under heavy fire (bravery which earned him a medal). He also worked hard to recruit Indians to fight in the First World War. “If therefore I have sinned,” he joked when others criticized him for supporting an imperialist conflict, “the cup of my sins is full to the brim.” For Gandhi believed that all citizens have a duty to support their community in wartime, regardless of their personal views: “I would expect every Indian to act the same,” he wrote. Hence, we find this quotation in “Non-violence in Peace and War,” “I would not hesitate to advise those who would bear arms to do so and fight for their country.”

Gandhi was also a keen admirer of the soldierly virtues of discipline, courage, and physical and mental toughness. Military metaphors fill his writings about civil disobedience in South Africa and non-cooperation against the British in the Twenties and Thirties. He often saw himself as a general leading his troops into battle, and at times, he could almost sound like Patton. When Indian villagers from Battiah tamely allowed hooligans to pillage their homes and outrage their wives and children, pleading they were just being practicing his version of nonviolence, or satyagraha, Gandhi was furious.

“Nonviolence is not a cover for cowardice,” he told them, “but it is the supreme virtue of the brave.” Satyagraha “fully accommodated violence” against those who threatened one’s family and community, as a matter of self-defense. “A violent war,” Gandhi said on another occasion, “is better than suffering injustice.”

His son Harilal once asked what he should have done if he had been present when Gandhi was assaulted and almost killed in South Africa in 1908. Should he have used violence to defend his father? Gandhi answered, yes, of course; and what was true in cases of self-defense for individuals, was even more true in the case of one’s country. “I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor,” he wrote, “than that she should act in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor” – or to savage attacks like those in New Delhi or on September 11.

Gandhi firmly believed nonviolence was morally superior to violence, and that forgiveness was “more manly” than revenge. But “vengeance,” he once wrote, “is any day superior to passive, effeminate and helpless submission,” because, “There is no room for cowards in a society of men, i.e., in a society which loves freedom.”

Freedom was for Gandhi the real antidote to injustice and violence. He had spent his life opposing the British Empire in India precisely because it gave the people no voice in their own government. But once a people controlled their own destiny, he also understood that the power of majority rule had to trump the pangs of individual conscience, especially in time of war.

“I should be deeply distressed,” Gandhi wrote, if people thought non-violence meant that “on every conceivable occasion every one of us were to be a law unto oneself and scrutinize, in golden scales, every action of our future National Assembly” – in short, a nation of Cindy Sheehans. Speaking for himself, he said, “I would surrender my judgment in most matters to national representatives” – only adding the proviso, “taking particular care in making my choice of such representatives.” He then added: “I know that in no other manner would a democratic government be possible for one single day.”

Critics of Gandhi point out, rightly, he once suggested Germany’s Jews could successfully confront their Nazi oppressors with non-violence. Defenders point out he knew little of what was going on 8,000 miles away in Europe. Today, with the Internet and global communication, no one has that excuse, least of all self-proclaimed Gandhi disciples. For Gandhi’s satyagraha was above all a battle for truth – the first casualty in today’s anti-war movement. It is the protesters, not George Bush or Mohandas Gandhi, who have confused democracy with tyranny, justice with injustice, and atrocities against innocents with legitimate self-defense. Today, Gandhi would look at the burning Twin Towers, Saddam Hussein’s mass graves, Al Qaeda’s beheadings, and the broken bodies in the streets of New Delhi, and say once again: “I would not hesitate to advise those who would bear arms to do so and fight for their country” – and say it proudly.

Mr. Herman’s “To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World” was released in paperback this month. He is currently writing a book on Gandhi and Churchill.