Just as we saw during the Cold War, many Left-wing commentators and academics are giving us the usual defeatist advice -- don't hit back, America is just as bad, give in.

It sounded familiar, so I checked recent statements of the men suspected of plotting this hideous slaughter -- terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and genocidal Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

And guess what? They are telling us the same thing.

What a coincidence. Let me demonstrate.

FIRST note how some of our Left-wing commentators sound just like Saddam when they suggest this great slaughter in New York was in some way America's own fault.

SADDAM HUSSEIN (statement from his al-Iraq newspaper): ``Brutal America, suffering from illusions of grandeur, has inflicted humiliation, famine and terrorism on all of the world's countries and today it reaps the fruits of its arrogant and stupid policy.''

Dr ANTHONY ASHBOLT (University of Wollongong): ``American foreign policy since World War II has been conducted in an aggressive indeed, at times, terroristic fashion . . . The US sowed many of the seeds which have spawned a spate of terrorist acts.''

RANA KABBANA (broadcaster writing in the Age): ``All must kowtow to the Pentagon and the almighty dollar, or be blown to smithereens . . . America's policies -- and those of its allies -- have become a crippling liability for which American civilians are having to pay.''

DID anyone hear an echo? Yes, let's blame the victim. Let's pretend that something -- anything -- the US has done in the Middle East could explain or justify such evil.

Let's do as apologists for the Nazis did, and ask whether the Jews in the concentration camps hadn't done something very bad to make Hitler so cross.

Above all, let's forget that such terrorists actually hate the US -- and its allies -- for stopping their kind from wiping out Israel.

For helping nations which these fanatics want to turn into bloody new Afghanistans. For being rich and free. For not being Muslim. Some ``crime''.

Next, see how many Left-wing commentators sound just like Saddam when they use this mass murder by Islamist terrorists to lecture the West about our sins.

SADDAM HUSSEIN: ``Many people do recognise that America had killed thousands or even millions of human beings in their countries.''

JOHN PILGER (author): ``The greatest source of terrorism in the world . . . is Western state terrorism . . . The idea that we are the good and they are the bad is absurd.''

ARGOT KINGSTON (Sydney Morning Herald and ABC commentator): ``As we back the US in bombing the bejesus out of Afghanistan . . . we wage our own war against Afghan refugees.''

MORAG FRASER (Sunday Age columnist): ``George W. Bush's vow that America would `whip terrorism' was as frightening as it was banal. Frightening because it signalled no real understanding of the place America occupies in the imaginations and in the fears of much of the world.''

ARE these people serious? Do they really think when they fly in a plane that it could be hijacked and exploded into sky scrapers by an American terrorist, backed by the US Government?

Do they honestly see no difference between the deliberate murder of nearly 7000 civilians and, say, the West's bombing of Serbian military facilities to save Kosovo's Muslims from ethnic cleansing?

Now see how many of our Left-wing commentators agree with Saddam in cautioning the US not to shoot back in self-defence.

SADDAM HUSSEIN: ``Stay where you are. Using the whip and gun is a light-hearted policy without a future.''

Dr ANTHONY BURKE (Adelaide University): ``Diplomacy should be given more time and more room to work.''

Dr MARK McKENNA (Australian National University): ``By making `war' and killing more innocent people we play into the terrorists' hands.''

Dr GREGORY PEMBERTON (Macquarie University): ``Even if a state such as Afghanistan were proved to be substantially involved, it must also be shown to be involved in a wider, ongoing campaign to warrant an armed US `self-defence'.''
MUSLIM nations which have long battled Islamist extremists -- such as Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Syria -- have never been silly enough to think terrorists respect weakness.

Nor should we now be silly enough to think that we can just send policemen to Afghanistan to arrest bin Laden, or that simply jailing him and a few cronies will do anything but breed contempt for us among his thousands of soldiers.
There is as much danger in responding too weakly, as there is in being too harsh. Remember: These terrorists will not hesitate to use nuclear or biological weapons against us the instant they get their hands on them.
And what does the Left suggest we do to protect ourselves from that? It won't say.
Finally, see how Saddam and our Left-wing commentators would have us, in effect, cave in to the terrorists' demands, even if this means abandoning Israel and many Arab governments to death and destruction.

SADDAM HUSSEIN: ``The security of the world could be attained . . . if America disengages itself from its evil alliance with Zionism, which has been scheming to exploit the world and plunge it in blood and darkness.''

Dr SHAHRAMAKBARZADEH (LaTrobe University, in the Age): ``Only systematic and sustained efforts at reformulating the US strategy in the Middle East can disarm terrorists and undermine their support base.''

Dr LESLIE CANNOLD, (Melbourne University): ``What (bin Laden) was also talking about was a sense of fury, for instance, about the political and economic exploitation that America has been carrying on in that region . . . The anger is what we need to tap into, and we can find other people who we can sit at a table and try to talk about it with.''

KENNETH DAVIDSON (Age commentator): ``Eventually terrorist activity on the scale now operating can be resolved only by political compromise.''

POLLY TOYNBEE: (writing in the Sydney Morning Herald): ``The wise course is for George Bush to reject the trap every president has been caught in, fatally handcuffed to the Israeli cause.''

WE can usually count on many of our opinion-making class to let down Australia, but the last two weeks sets a low in their unconscious betrayal of our highest interests.

I'm sure those I've quoted reject terrorism and are shocked by the attack on the US. But it seems large sections of the Left still cannot get over an anti-Americanism that is as blindly self-hating as an adolescent's loathing for his parents.
If this war against terrorism is indeed to defend the civilisation we share with the United States, many in the Left sadly seem to feel that it's a war which is not worth winning.

Worse, note how many teach our teenagers, who would little know our very freedoms are at stake.