Mr. Clinton's peace plan for Israel and Syria is a transparent attempt to bribe both countries to "be good," committing nearly as many taxpayer billions as we've been using to similarly pay off Israel and Egypt for 30 years -- even as Arab leaders continue to promise (for domestic consumption) to "push Israel into the sea."

Additionally, the Clinton plan would require Israel to give up the strategic Golan Heights, based on twin promises from Syria's Hafez Assad that he won't again shell Israel from the heights, and from Bill Clinton that U.S./U.N. "peacekeeping" forces will man the heights as a buffer zone, forever.

Problem is, Assad may not rule another year, while we know Bill Clinton will be gone in 11 months ... as if anyone could trust the man's word that long, anyway.

Israel appears fortunate to have in Ehud Barak a leader with enough spine to "just say no."

Meantime, the Washington Post editorialized Feb. 3 that "The president should publicly insist that the IRA begin disarmament" to preserve a North Irish "settlement that was once a fine testament to America's peace-making prowess."

Apparently the Clinton administration -- which brokered this deal for a "coalition government" on condition Northern Ireland's Catholics turn in their arms -- hasn't yet gone far enough for the Post in violating America's most sacred and sensible founding principles.

Would the newspaper have called for the victorious George Washington to turn in all the arms of the Continental Army in 1782, sitting down to form a "coalition government" with generals Cornwallis and Howe under haughty British threats to otherwise "suspend the Philadelphia assembly and reimposing direct rule"?

"Peace" sounds great. But if "peace" can be achieved through unilateral disarmament, then Hitler can be said to have reached a state of "peace" with his Jewish and Gypsy minorities by 1944, can't he? Should he have been awarded the appropriate Nobel Prize?

Wasn't it English immigrant Thomas Paine who wrote for all Americans in 1775: "The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. ... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half of the world deprived of the use of them; ... the weak would become a prey to the strong"?

Did I miss something? Has Britain offered to scuttle the Home Fleet? Have members of the Unionist Ulster Resistance turned in all those tons of RPG-7s and AK-47s they brought in across the Belfast docks from South Africa back in '87?

Wasn't it federalist Noah Webster who explained in 1787 "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe," but that in a free country "The Supreme power cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops, that can be, on any pretence, raised ..."?

Nor does our founding doctrine -- that only an armed populace can long remain free -- apply only on these shores. Mr. Jefferson did not write in his declaration that "All Americans are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. ..." He wrote "All men."

Simpering pedants and cringing bed-wetters who would wish away this lesson, learned through such bitter experience, insist that a free people only has a "right to bear arms" by joining the National Guard, taking their arms, their orders, and their uniforms from the central state. But the founding fathers warned against relying on any such "special militia." It was Richard Henry Lee, author of the Bill of Rights, who in 1788 advised "The constitution ought to secure a genuine [militia] and guard against a select militia. ... To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."

Wasn't it Washington's friend George Mason who rose to warn us 220 years ago that pro-British strategists were resolved "to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them."

Yes, the Irish Republican Army has perpetrated terrorist acts which we cannot condone. But have the black-and-tans and the English red berets been playing by the Marquess of Queensberry rules? And wouldn't the British have hanged Washington and his militia snipers as "terrorists" if they could have caught them?

Why wasn't it "terrorism" for military tanks and helicopters to launch repeated machine-gun assaults on a Texas church full of innocent women and children in 1993? Is that the kind of "peacekeeping" Mr. Clinton has in mind for a disarmed religious minority in Northern Ireland?

When "terrorism" is applied only to the acts of freedom-fighters, but never to state agents no matter how they behave, then the word ceases to have any objective meaning, and becomes nothing but a statist epithet. According to "the rules," Iran can challenge U.S. meddling in her internal affairs without being dubbed "terrorist" only by building a fleet of battleships and bombarding Hampton Roads, and Ireland can legitimately resist English meddling in her affairs only by sailing to Scapa Flow and engaging the Royal Navy in battle royal.

Need we ask who dreams up such "rules"?

No government can be trusted, that does not trust its own people with military-style arms of greater weight and power than those possessed by the central government itself. If the English threaten to disband this fake "coalition government" rather than grant true self-determination to an armed and sovereign people, better for an armed IRA to call their bluff now than later.

Next week: amidst the 101 new or expanded bureaucratic ant farms proposed by Mr. Clinton in his 89-minute Snore of the Union, those who nodded off can be forgiven if they missed his promise to wade us deeper into the Colombian civil war against the dreaded "narco-traffickers" by "going after their money."

Surprise -- it turns out this campaign is well underway, with the result that the Colombian economy already nears collapse.