Appeasing Thugs

The Filipino government appears today to be single-handedly walking the entire world across that grizzly nexus of terrorist negotiation and appeasement. It appears that Manila is in the process of bowing to the kidnappers, and has agreed to withdraw its humanitarian aid workers from Iraq by August 20. Certainly, the Philippine government is at liberty to choose its own approach toward freeing Angelo de La Cruz from his impending beheading at the hands of the Khaled Bin Al-Qalid Squadrons of the Islamic Army of Iraq. However, let no one mistake the impact of the sheepishly myopic carelessness of the Filipino government upon the safety of the troops and citizens of the nations of the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq and around the world. At whatever level whether local or international, it is crime prevention 101 that any negotiation or appeasement of kidnappers only facilitates crime and terror. It only emboldens terrorists to repeat and imitate – inoculating their fear of capture, death, or eventual loss. In actuality, such appeasement ultimately erodes the soul of our free world which depends upon moral nations standing for freedom and liberty against tyranny and the sword. When even one nation succumbs to threats of intimidations of our individuals, this will live long in the memory of the Islamo-fascists or any group which seeks to impact political change through the terrorizing of noncombatants. When the hooded demons terrorize they roll the dice betting on human weakness. When any nation genuflects in weakness to the demands of terrorists, it will be followed by many more rolls of the dice. If there is anything which is obvious in the history of acts of terrorism it is that. It is about time that the world’s body politic begin to address the ideology we are all fighting in this war on Islamo-fascism. As we articulate the philosophy we are fighting, the actions of individual nations when confronted with the enemy will thus follow more logically and the harm of appeasement will be more clear. It is beyond befuddling that the Philippine government which has for many years been fighting its own indigenous factions of Islamist radicalism within its own borders did not learn from its own experiences and learn about the nature of the Islamo-fascist ideology. It appears that the Philippine government has also been duped into believing that these thugs care about Iraq and the presence of the Philippines there. What they do care about is the radical Islamist ideology and the forces which stand in the way of imposing it upon populations. Some nations have criticized the Bush administration’s policy of aggressive dismantling of terror networks and the now even more obvious link with Saddam’s Iraq which this incident further accentuates. Yet, there remains silence on the fact that there is nothing which facilitates global terrorism more than providing gratification to terrorists for their demands. As a global body politic if we are seeking a world of peace and tranquility, those who seek to impose theocracy and state mandated terror need to understand once and for all that free nations will not accept their ideology and will not accept their negotiations. I hope the next few days brings forward a genuine global discussion of the negative impact upon all nations of those nations which choose appeasement. I hope to see an explanation of how the Philippine government established channels of communication with these barbarians and did not find a way to use the resources of the Coalition to find their hostage and capture his kidnappers. Spain and now the Philippines have genuflected. South Korea, Great Britain, and the U.S. and others in the Coalition are still fighting to maintain a world order where those who seek to instill fear in noncombatants will lose out to the forces of freedom and liberty. If members of Al Qaeda find that no matter which way their dice rolls in this demonic game of terror, they will be ignored and destroyed, they will slowly disappear. If, however, the dice occasionally rolls in their favor, even Pavlov’s animals kept going back for more. This column first appeared at this link at the Arizona Republic