In another era terrorist attacks would have been regarded as an obvious provocation for full-scale war. Yet over the past 30 years, thugs such as Yasser Arafat and the Ayatollah Khomeini developed the new strategy of the terror war—a war in which terrorism is not a prelude to armed combat, but a substitute for it. What makes that kind of war possible? The contemporary “peace movement,” which paralyzes the victims of terror and prevents them from fighting back with all of their overwhelming military power. In this talk Mr. Tracinski examines the underlying meaning and deepest philosophical roots of pacifism, explains why such an obviously disastrous idea has such pervasive influence (even on political leaders who are not pacifists) and shows how the “peace movement” determines the very nature of the terror war, from its broadest outlines to the day-to-day “cycle of violence” of the Mid-East “peace process.”