In a speech to the 85th American Legion Convention in 2003, President Bush vowed that "if you harbor a terrorist, if you support a terrorist, if you feed a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorists".
Today the Times has revealed that France, Italy and Germany have paid $45 million in deals to free hostages held in Iraq. In my book that counts as "supporting terrorists".
That Germany cuts deals with Arab terror groups is no surprise at all. Germany, after all, released terrorists responsible for the 1972 Munich Olympic Games massacre in response to "demands" made in the subsequent staged "hijack" of a Lufthansa flight. This, of course, prompted the Mossad to launch Mivtza Elohim.
And late last year Germany quietly released Mohammed Ali Hamadi, a Hezbollah terrorist convicted of killing a US Navy diver during the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847. Hamadi's release has been speculatively linked to that of German archaeologist Susanne Osthoff, taken hostage in Iraq.
The desperation of seeing a loved one held hostage is something that I understand. But paying ransom demands to terrorists—don't be fooled by their disguise as "payments to intermediaries"—puts arms in their hands and funds their future operations. It also gives them victories to bolster their support and establishes a mandate for the further kidnapping of foreigners in Iraq (currently 250 and counting).
Despite his rhetoric to the American Legion, however, I doubt Dubya will rain missiles on downtown Berlin, Paris or Rome. Let's just hope they don't suffer the next 9/11 either as a consequence of their appeasement. After all, we're all allies together in the war on terror, right?
