 By Michael Reagan July 27, 2006
Nobody wanted to listen when former Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and a lot of American conservatives warned that you cannot negotiate with terrorists such as Arafat, Hezbollah and Hamas, or their sponsors in Syria and Iran. We were accused of being warmongers and told that the future of Israel lay not in defending itself, but in making concession after concession to an enemy sworn to demolish the Jewish state and drive its people into the sea. Goaded by the peace-at-any-price crowd who can never recognize evil when it stares them in the face because they don't recognize that evil exists, Israel attempted to mollify the anti-Israel United Nations and the hand-wringing liberals here and abroad by playing nice with their sworn enemies. Israel withdrew from Gaza, driving their own people - who had settled there with Israel's approval and encouragement - out of their homes and land. In return for this magnanimous gesture, the terrorists showered missiles on Israeli territory almost daily. Undaunted by this display of the real and vicious nature of the enemy, Israeli's government pushed on with plans to evacuate the West Bank, and hand it over to what purports to be a Palestinian state aborning. The response: more missiles raining down on innocent Israeli citizens and more threats to destroy Israel. When it finally dawned on the Israeli government that appeasement does not work when the enemy refuses to be appeased with anything less than total victory and the total destruction of the state of Israel, one would have thought that the international liberal appeasement movement would have applauded Israel for going all-out to defend its people. It's obvious that this was not to be the appeasers merely stepped up their rhetoric, demanding that the international community intervene and force Israel to sit down and negotiate with Hezbollah and Hamas and heaven knows who else. There is now a great hue and cry demanding diplomacy and negotiations - all aimed at preventing Israel from finally putting an end to the terrorism that they have for so long endured. Nobody echoes Douglas MacArthur's warning that there is no substitute for victory. You'd think the appeasers would learn from what happened when MacArthur was prevented from achieving victory in the Korean War. The reality of a crazed North Korea would not exist as a nuclear-armed communist dictatorship had MacArthur been listened to. The international community, which is content to let the United States and Britain shoulder the burden of fighting the war on Islamic terrorism, stands on the sidelines. Instead of cheering us on, it condemns us for defending them against the terrorism that threatens them as much as it does us. They whine about the need to accommodate the displaced Palestinians by allowing them to have a state of their own, side-by-side with Israel, but ignore the fact that the Palestinians could have their state for the asking, but are prevented from doing so by Hamas and Hezbollah and their sponsors in Iran and Syria who will accept nothing less than the destruction of Israel. It really irks me to hear the networks give time to the likes of Madeline Albright, Clinton's Secretary of State and one of those demanding diplomacy as the only means of dealing with the Mideast crisis. The administration she served sat idly by in the face of such outrages as the first World Trade Center bombing and the bombing of the USS Cole. In return for their patience we got 9/11. In return for their efforts to broker peace between Israel and the PLO, all we got was continued tension and unrest in the Middle East. In return for her submission to North Korea we got missiles aimed at the U.S. and Japan. Newt Gingrich is right. We are in the midst of World War III and you don't win wars by courting the enemy, you win them by doing what Israel is doing fighting back with everything they've got. God help them if they listen to the siren song of peace through weakness, of victory through negotiation. We were right all along, and we have a right to crow.
Look for Mike's new book "Twice Adopted". Order autographed books at www.reagan.com Distributed exclusively to subscribers for publication by Cagle, Inc. www.caglecartoons.com.
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