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At Our Peril   When Margaret Thatcher negotiated with Communists
about human rights, she had a self-imposed rule. It was to
deliver the same message in private as in public. That was, and
is, unusual. Politicians prefer bold and indignant speeches at
home to bruising confrontations with foreign leaders face to
face. But you have to do it. The reason is simple. It is
because, whatever someone's ideology, he will not take you
seriously as a human being if he thinks you don't really care
about the causes you espouse. When the Soviet leaders understood
that Ronald Reagan and Mrs Thatcher were deadly serious about
the rights of people who, in Soviet eyes, didn't really matter
at all, the Kremlin also grasped that Western leaders were
serious about wider strategy — Afghanistan, subversion, weaponry
and the rest.  The struggle against Soviet Communism and the
struggle against militant Islam are different in several ways.
But one lesson confirmed by the