THE CONSEQUENCES OF A HUG-AND-APPEASEMENT FOREIGN POLICY

Last week, we learned the answer to the hoary question "What does a Scotsman wear under his kilt?" When it comes to terrorism, the answer’s "a white flag."

But Scotland’s craven release, "on humanitarian grounds," of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the mastermind of the Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 passengers aboard  Pan Am flight 103 in 1988, was merely the noisiest terrorist triumph during a week of shame.

And noisy it was: Libya’s Moammar Khadafy staged a huge homecoming party for the terrorist. (Think that would’ve happened while W was president?) The gleeful Khadafy rubbed the West’s snout in our feckless taste for appeasement.

Appeasement was also the watchword back in the United States, where Yale University Press delighted Islamist extremists by removing all illustrations from a scholarly work about the Danish cartoon debacle — not just the caricatures of Mohammed.

Elsewhere, the casualty count went beyond book illustrations. In Iraq, Islamist terrorists staged massive suicide bombings in Baghdad. Over a hundred Iraqis died, with more than a thousand wounded. The foreign and finance ministries lie in rubble. The Iraqi government is reeling.

Our president went to the beach.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban crippled the national elections so severely that the eventual "winner" won’t have much of a mandate. Despite madcap ballot-box stuffing, the final tally will probably show that less than half of the eligible population voted — fewer than one in five in the crucial south.

Afghans put more faith in Taliban threats than in government promises. US and Western officials are struggling to paint a smile on the face of the corpse, but the vote was divisive, not unifying. On Sunday, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, admitted that the Afghan situation is "serious and deteriorating."

That’s what happens when, instead of killing our enemies, we try hugs.

Iran? We all know that its nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes. That’s why, just last week, President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad chose a Revolutionary Guard commander, Ahmad Vahidi, as his new defense minister.

Interpol wants Vahidi for running the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires — 85 dead, 300 wounded. Soon, he may have his trigger finger on nuclear weapons. But no need for Israel to worry: The Obama administration will negotiate with Tehran.

Returning to America, the establishment media continued to portray Guantanamo-imprisoned terrorists as victims, while further chastising the bygone Bush administration for rudeness to mass murderers. (Any self-righteous journalist care to spend a night in a cell with one of the butchers whose "rights" have been infringed?)

Then the White House took all major interrogations away from the CIA, further restricting the techniques allowed to stop terrorists.

And now the administration’s hard-left Justice Department — perhaps the most extreme in our country’s history — is on another witch hunt to prosecute CIA patriots who did all they could to keep our citizens safe.

Last but not least, a minor legal case bears enormous implications: A 17-year-old female Moslem immigrant to the US, Rifqa Bary, begged our justice system not to return her to her family.

She fears she’ll be the victim of an honor killing.

Smooching with the boys? Naw. Much worse: She converted to Christianity — still an offense for which, many Moslems believe, Islam (that "religion of peace") prescribes death. Fleeing from her Ohio home to Florida, she’s in protective custody, awaiting a judge’s verdict on Sept. 3.

Not all of the details are clear, but the big picture is: A legal resident of our country, where religious freedom is constitutionally guaranteed, fears death at the hands of her relatives and her community because she changed her faith.

If she’s sent "home" and murdered, will the crime be written off as freedom of religion?

Coddled by Washington Democrats and Republicans, extremist mullahs here in the United States — often funded by our "friends" the Saudis — invoke religious freedom at the drop of a prayer rug. And our elected officials cower.

Well, it’s high time for Moslem clerics across this country to issue a public statement explicitly denouncing all violence against Moslems who switch faiths. This is America, folks. If a Methodist turns Moslem, fine. But if a Moslem becomes an Evangelical, that, too, must be tolerated. The Koran is not a license to kill in this country.

(And that dating thing? Murder over that’s a no-no, too.)

One year ago, terrorists were on the defensive around the world. Then a new US administration condemned our country while "reaching out" to our enemies.

And here we are.

US Army Lt.Col. (ret) Ralph Peters new novel, "The War After Armageddon," will be published Sept. 15.