The Middle East crisis is building despite UN and liberal calls for Israel to agree to a cease fire. The terrorists are still lobbing hundreds of rockets on Israeli citizens, yet somehow Israel is the one who must show good faith by stopping first. This is the same logic that demands that law abiding citizens must give up their guns and their goods and even their lives to the criminals to solve crime.

The terrorists put their bases and weapons around innocent civilians and frighten them into staying where they are as human shields. Israel uses leaflets and other messages to warn civilians to get out of the area well before a strike, even though this alerts the terrorists that an attack is coming. Then Israel apologizes when civilians get killed or injured when it does what it must to shut down rocket launches or other forms of attack on its civilians and troops.

The liberal belief that if one simply believes hard enough and long enough on a sweet dream is a delusion that the world cannot afford in a time when mankind has the weaponry to destroy mankind and the environment of the entire planet. You can't dream a criminal into not attacking innocent victims if he or she doesn't want to stop. That's why we have police departments, courts, and prisons.

Israel is too small a state surrounded by too many well-armed enemies to indulge in delusions about the innate good will of its neighbors. The few instances where it has made an effective peace have been based on its ability to defend itself. It had to show again and again that it can win a war if attacked. That is precisely what it is doing right now. Its current conflict shows that its enemies are not solely intent on its destruction. They are the enemies of everyone who does not share their beliefs.

We must look clearly at terrorists as international criminals who must be arrested before they destroy the rest of us. There have been enough linked attacks on civilians throughout the world to show the terrorists' intentions. Just as we hunt down serial killers and their accomplices to protect our local communities, the law abiding peoples of the world have to hunt down the terrorists and capture or kill them. We can argue about trials and prison conditions for them once we have their violence stopped.

It is fine to dream about a time when people live peacefully with each other, but we must take the necessary steps to deal with those who dream of a time when they rule through force. As long as there are incompatible belief systems where some followers will take up arms to force them onto others, there is no way to tolerate every system as a personal choice.

It is not peace or freedom if the only way to keep the systems from destroying each other is to maintain an arms race with occasional outbreaks of war to test each side's resolve to defend itself effectively. There will be no real peace or freedom until we destroy the systems which foment violence and slavery among the people trapped within them and towards their neighbors. Our neighbors are the whole world now, and we must back democratic, law abiding, human rights supporting states like Israel when they fight to protect themselves from aggressors.