Citizens of Israel are understandably up in arms about the cease fire agreement worked out in the Untied Nations, and what it will mean for them, especially if their prime minister signs on to it.

They understand one of the basic concepts of warfare against terrorists that seems to escape the elitist overlords at the UN, which is, you have to kill or permanently disable the entire current generation of terrorists to create enough breathing room to educate the up and coming generations. As I have written in the past, if you don't kill them, and they are conscious, they are plotting their next move, and if you ignore them long enough, they will execute their next move, which usually involves executing innocent people as well.

Terrorists use a cease fire as an opportunity to bind their wounds, create new defenses, develop new tactics, recruit new fighters and rearm. They never, ever, really mean it when they agree to stop fighting.

Yet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seems to bend to whichever breeze is blowing at the moment whether it is prevailing or not, and that in itself creates a morale boost for the terrorists. We also must ask ourselves, who is actually signing a cease fire claiming to speak for Hezbollah? The Lebanese? The Syrians? The Russians? The Chinese??? What if Hezbollah fighters tell their sponsors to stuff it and continue fighting?

Long ago, as a Marine, I was taught that there is nothing wrong with changing tactics to achieve an objective. In fact, an informal military creed dictates that you 1.) Have a plan; and 2.) Have a second plan for when the first one goes awry, which it will.

Adapting tactics to achieve an objective is necessary to survival and success. But waffling is not adapting. It is an indication of uncertainty, inexperience, timidity, and fear. Terrorists smell fear, just like wild animals smell fear.

Fear creates chemical reactions in the human body, the so-called fight or flight syndrome, and the resultant changes in chemical composition can be discerned by ultra-sensitive animals and terrorists. Hezbollah smells fear all over Olmert, and you can bet the terrorists are licking their chops at the prospect of ripping into a toothless Israel.

The only realistic outcome for the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, if true peace is to be achieved, is the destruction of Hezbollah. Anything less means that this is merely an elitist ruse to give terrorism a moral victory.

What is really baffling, is the apparent belief in the halls of the UN that if they just give in to terrorist demands, a time will come when the terrorists have enough and will be content to rest on their laurels. WRONG. Terrorists don't want stuff they want power!

A case in point would be the Viet Cong in post-1975 Vietnam. The few remaining political cadres who survived the war against America honestly believed that their North Vietnamese communist masters would share power, open up society, divvy up the land and the wealth, and all would be paradise.

It didn't work that way. In fact, it didn't work that way to such an extent that even after a million Vietnamese fled the country as Boat People, remaining rice farmers in the Mekong Delta, disdainfully referred to as 'peasants' by the communists, rioted, only to be put down by the military.

When the former Viet Cong leaders complained, they were thrown into communist concentration camps right alongside former members of the South Vietnamese government and military. Ah, equality at last!

If the Islamic terrorists prevail, the world will plunge into darkness and despair. That isn't a line from a movie, that is a realistic assessment of the facts. If the UN is allowed to continue calling the shots in determining how to proceed against the terrorists the world is doomed, because to put it bluntly, the UN is clueless.

One last thought. There is a growing movement in the United States to draft Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a candidate for president in 2008. The basis of this movement is that she is universally seen as strong, aware and consistent.

But if she goes along with a cease fire that merely delays the inevitable, and allows a rearmed and re-motivated Hezbollah to renew its attacks in a few months or a year, she and her supporters can shut down their web site and find something else to do.

Americans, and the rest of the free world, are looking for real leaders, real heroes, real strength. We see it in George Bush and Tony Blair, regardless of how the World Terrorist Media treats them in their home countries.

But weakness, waffling, and giving in to terrorism are not the traits of strong leaders or heroes. Only true strength will suffice.