Giving In

When Philippine truck driver Angelo de la Cruz was kidnapped by insurgents outside Fallujah on July 8 and threatened with decapitation unless the Philippines' 51 peacekeepers were pulled out from Iraq, Manila was presented with a wrenching and all-too-familiar dilemma. Similar demands were made of Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in April when three Japanese civilians were kidnapped in Iraq, but he refused to withdraw his 550 soldiers as their captors insisted (the hostages were later freed). Likewise, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun last month would not submit to terrorists' demands that he cancel plans to send 3,000 troops to...