Rudy

What a bold speech last night, or at least the part when he addressed terrorism...I'll link it up later, my computer is messed up right now, but basically, he pointed at Europe and said, appeasement of terrorism has gone on too long and only emboldened the terrorists. He chastised a world in which allows political agendas to be heard through terrorist violence - why else, he argued would Yasser Arafat have a nobel peace prize.

He's not a great speaker, but on this point I think he was exactly right.

"Terrorism did not start on September 11, 2001. It had been festering for many years.

And the world had created a response to it that allowed it to succeed. The attack on the Israeli team at the Munich Olympics was in 1972. And the pattern had already begun.

The three surviving terrorists were arrested and within two months released by the German government.

Action like this became the rule, not the exception. Terrorists came to learn they could attack and often not face consequences.

In 1985, terrorists attacked the Achille Lauro and murdered an American citizen who was in a wheelchair, Leon Klinghoffer.

They marked him for murder solely because he was Jewish.

Some of those terrorists were released and some of the remaining terrorists allowed to escape by the Italian government because of fear of reprisals.

So terrorists learned they could intimidate the world community and too often the response, particularly in Europe, was "accommodation, appeasement and compromise."

And worse the terrorists also learned that their cause would be taken more seriously, almost in direct proportion to the barbarity of the attack.

Terrorist acts became a ticket to the international bargaining table.

How else to explain Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) winning the Nobel Peace Prize when he was supporting a terrorist plague in the Middle East that undermined any chance of peace? "