Several politicians here have said that if Israel renounced the four-year-old rules of engagement and if Hezbollah knew the Israelis would respond severely to every attack, the war would be over.
Likewise, Afghanistan's new leader, Hamid Karzai, suggested that Mullah Omar could get an amnesty if he renounced terrorism -- until Washington forced Mr. Karzai to eat his words.
What surprises me is how many people in the Republican party think their fortunes would be worse if they renounced him.
During a press conference with the two leaders the Prime Minister also suggested that Britain would accept the Taliban being brought into the new government if it renounced violence.
That is why there is a logical link between the choice he made in the early Forties and the manner in which he responded to the offer by PW Botha to release all political prisoners if we renounced violence.
He proposed to the wealthy governments of the global North that if Ecuador renounced any development in Yasuni, these wealthy governments should compensate Ecuador, on the grounds that this was a contribution to the global struggle against climate change.
Ms. Petrella was convicted of involvement in murder and other crimes in Italy, and in 1993 fled to France, where President François Mitterrand had a policy of granting asylum to leftist Italian militants if they renounced violence.
In 2006, Ehud Olmert offered Hamas the chance to become a normalized political party — if it renounced violence, accepted international agreements, and, so, in effect, recognized Israel, none of which it was prepared to do.
It wasn't as if Americans renounced worldly success (this is America!), but there were rival status hierarchies: the biblical hierarchy, the working man's hierarchy, the artist's hierarchy, the intellectual's hierarchy, all of which questioned success and denounced those who climbed and sold out.
Even Hamid Karzai -- the designated leader of Afghanistan's interim government, whom the United States gave diplomatic backing -- had said he would consider amnesty for Mullah Omar if he renounced terrorism, then changed his position after the announcement drew strong criticism from Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.
