Rumsfeld Warns Against Terrorist Appeasers
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Friday any government hoping to “make a separate peace” with terrorists would be mistaken, but he denied the United States was pressuring anybody to join its war on terror. Noting that some governments see less of a threat in terrorism than does the Bush administration, Rumsfeld compared the split in views to the early days of Adolf Hitler’s rule in Germany in the 1930s. That is when, he said, some European nations argued that Hitler’s military threats were empty rhetoric. “Pretty soon he’s got most of Europe, and the people who thought otherwise were wrong,” Rumsfeld said. “There were people who thought he could be appeased; there were people who thought they could accommodate; there were people who thought they could make a separate deal. And it turned out they couldn’t.” Similarly, some of today’s leaders believe terrorist groups can be accommodated, he said. Full Story