We're fighting for them. Never forget this.

Today, 16 Afghan girls are recuperating in a hospital after they were poisoned and lost consciousness at their school.

This atrocity comes on the heels of similar incidents in April. 88 schoolgirls and teachers were poisoned in three separate incidents during that month as well.

The Taliban is the primary suspect for all these offences.

As the doctor treating the girls in one of the April incidents stated, these were "terrorist activities against education in the country."

To call these events evil barely captures the essence of what occurred. All these girls wish to do is attend school and pursue an education; to become productive, sophisticated members of society. And against that noble sentiment, there remains factions of fundamentalism and barbarism that would commit mass murder against children in order to impose their will.

Imagine for a moment you lived in such a society. Then imagine that there were people working to free you from such savagery, but you lived in constant terror that they would leave, abandoning you to the forces of oppression that you had finally escaped.

This is the moral dilemma the West faces in deciding what to do about Afghanistan.

The cost of the war - in both blood and treasure - is undeniably extreme. The cost of this war and the one in Iraq has now surpassed $1 trillion for the United States alone. Thousands of lives have been lost. Morale and public support have often taken serious hits among allegations of complicity with warlords, corruption and disturbing legislation emerging about the Karzai government.

And yet we are up against a foe who would poison and kill children simply for going to school. During the rule of the Taliban, from 1996-2001, women were forbidden to work, or leave the house without a male escort, among other misogynistic practices. Professional women - such as doctors or teachers - were banned from working. Subservience to men was the rule of law.

Now, the recently adopted Afghan constitution states clearly that "the citizens of Afghanistan - whether man or woman- have equal rights and duties before the law."

Do we intend to give those words meaning, or are we content to simply abandon them having convinced ourselves we've done as much as we can?

Of course, the West did not enter Afghanistan solely on a human rights mission, and there have been many mistakes made along the way. Perfection in this mission is a long way off and will prove elusive.

But we simply cannot abandon the Afghan people after so much sacrifice and so much progress. The very fact that these girls can attend a school and dream to become teachers, doctors or whatever else is a testament to the tremendous progress that has been made.

It is time for us to determine if we are willing to back our commitment to human rights up with more than mere words. Whatever the sins of the past the West now has a tangible opportunity to make a positive change in a part of the world that desperately needs it.

We must continue to rise to the occasion.