By Richard Grenell
Today the UN Security Council met in an Emergency Meeting to react to the latest illegal rocket launch by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), known by most people as the country North Korea.
Continue reading “CALIFORNIA VULNERABLE TO ATTACK BY NORTH KOREA”
Frank Gaffney, Jr., President of the Center for Security Policy, and a columnist for the Washington Times has an article today about how the steps that Obama is taking with respect to our national security will not only diminish our power, but will also encourage our enemies to perceive us as less powerful – a very dangerous and vulnerable position for America.
President Obama’s stewardship of the national security portfolio to date amounts to a wrecking operation, a set of policies he must understand will not only weaken the United States but embolden our foes. After all, the Communist agitator Saul Alinsky, a formative influence in Mr. Obama’s early years as a “community organizer,” made Rule Number One in his 1971 book Rules for Radicals: “Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.”
According to this logic, the various steps Barack Obama is taking with respect to the armed forces, the foreign battlefields in which they are engaged, our allies as well as our adversaries will not only diminish our power. They will encourage our enemies to perceive us as less powerful – with ominous implications. Consider some illustrative examples:
* The Obama administration is cutting the defense budget by 10%. The result will be to preclude much, if not virtually all, of the modernization that will be required to prepare the U.S. military to contend with tomorrow’s wars. Most of what the Pentagon spends goes to fixed – and growing – personnel-related costs (pay, bonuses, health care, etc.) and operations. As a result, at Obama funding levels, there will not be much available even to “reset” today’s forces by refurbishing the equipment they have been using up in present conflicts.
* The President is on a path to denuclearizing the United States by refusing to modernize the arsenal or even to fund fully the steps necessary to assure the viability of the weapons we have. He hopes to dress up this act of unilateral disarmament by seeking to resume arms control negotiations with Russia, as though such throw-backs to the old Cold War and its bipolar power structure apply today – let alone that there are grounds for believing the Kremlin will adhere to new treaties any better than the previous ones it systematically violated.
* For good measure, Mr. Obama is mounting a frontal assault on the armed forces themselves. The President plans to repeal the law prohibiting homosexuals from serving in the military. It is absolutely predictable that significant numbers of servicemen and women – including many of the most experienced commissioned and non-commissioned officers – will retire rather than serve in conditions of forced intimacy with individuals who may find them sexually attractive. The effect will be to break the all-volunteer force.
* Then there are the Obama initiatives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The President’s adoption of a deadline for withdrawing most U.S. forces from the former and his signaling that – despite a near-term 17,000 troop “surge” – he is preparing to turn the latter over to the oxymoronic-dubbed “moderate” Taliban are conveying unmistakable messages to friends and foes alike: Under Barack Obama, it is better to be a foe of America than one of its friends.
This message is, of course, being strongly reinforced by the treatment he is doling out to nations in each category.
* Friends like the Poles and Czechs have been left in the lurch as the Obama administration intimates that the United States now thinks Europe does not need after all to be defended against Iranian nuclear-armed missile threats. Not since Jimmy Carter abandoned the NATO deployment of so-called “neutron bombs” has a President conveyed such a devastating message of weakness and irresolution in the face of hostile threats to our European alliance partners.
* Other allies have not fared much better. Israel is on notice that its security interests are going to be sacrificed to the Obama administration’s pursuit of a Palestinian state – even one ruled by a terrorist organization like Hamas (or, for that matter, Fatah) committed to Israel’s destruction. Britain has been told it neither deserves nor has a “special” relationship with the United States.
* Meanwhile virtually every enemy of the United States is the object of assiduous cultivation and overtures for rapprochement by the Obama administration. It will reward IranSyria can expect the Golan Heights and removal from the terrorism list even as it pursues nuclear arms, renews its overtly colonial hold on Lebanon, supports the terrorists of Hezbollah and helps its abiding master, Iran, destabilize Iraq. for “going nuclear” with normalized relations.
* As mentioned above, Russia gets to be treated like a superpower again while it arms Iran, inserts bombers and naval units into our hemisphere, wields its energy leverage against our friends in Europe, Ukraine and Georgia and squeezes our supply lines into Afghanisan. There are no repercussions for China as it makes a mockery of the administration’s beloved Law of the Sea Treaty by threatening an unarmed U.S. naval vessel in its Exclusive Economic Zone.
* Last but hardly least, a “respectful” Obama administration seems keen to embrace those in the Muslim Brotherhood and like-minded Islamist organizations who seek to impose the toxic theo-political-legal program authoritative Islam calls Shariah on distant populations – and insinuate it into our country.
Can there be any doubt what America’s adversaries make of all this? Great grief will come our way if they conclude, as Alinsky surely would, that our power is waning, and that they can exercise theirs with impunity against our interests – and those of whatever friends we have left.
President Bush, whatever else you can say about him, was very careful to make sure that our enemies never got a perception of the U.S. as being weak or vulnerable. Is that why we were never attacked after 9-11? Will the actions of this President encourage at attack because we will be perceived as weak? Only time will tell.
Palin v. Obama: Who’s Better Suited for National Security Leadership
by Clark S. Judge
In the Category 100 hurricane of mainstream media sarcasm, dismissals and denunciations that has blown over the number two spot on the GOP ticket this week, one simple fact remains standing amidst the debris: Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is better suited to take responsibility for the national security of the United States than is Illinois Senator Barack Obama.
Let me be clear first about the reasons I could have had in mind, but did NOT have in mind, in reaching this contrarian conclusion.
First off, I was NOT thinking about the MSM’s record for perceptiveness and insight when it comes to national strategy and commanders in chief. It is not a good record.
Over seven years, I served in the Reagan Administration in capacities ranging from volunteer staff for a commission to review government management to an international economic policy assignment to speechwriter to the president. I watched as the same institutions – even sometimes the same people – directed the same rhetorical fire at Ronald Reagan that they are now directing at Governor Palin.
Ignorant, dangerous, trigger-happy cowboy (well, not “boy” in Palin’s case): all this and more they said about the author of the most brilliant national security strategy of the 20th century. For more than a decade after he returned to California, they dismissed as a near buffoon the man whose policies led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War within less than a presidential term of his exit from office.
For example, The New York Times was a leader of the charge of the blind brigade then and is once more leading the pack now. This Sunday’s edition featured a front page story and three columnist writing that the governor who took on corruption in high places, cut federal earmarks accepted in half and enjoyed an 80 percent approval rating was not such an able a leader at all and, of course, not suited for global leadership.
But I am NOT suggesting that, given their record, the opinion of this crowd on the suitability of any candidate for global leadership is beyond laughable and beneath contempt. I’m not. Truly, I’m not.
And in saying that Senator Obama is less qualified than Governor Palin, I am NOT thinking of the almost unbelievable absence of judgment that the senator has displayed on national security matters since the campaign began.
It is hard to pick the low point. There have been so many — from advocating abrogation of NAFTA to proposing unconditional direct talks between US president Obama and Iranian president Ahmadinejad to announcing in a televised debate that he would start pulling US troops out of Iraq within sixty days of taking office to his running mate telling Israeli generals that they would have to learn to live with a nuclear Iran. It is quite a list.
But my top pick for low moment came in just the past couple of weeks. In an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, Senator Obama said of our troop surge in Iraq that no one could have imagined how successful it would be. The mainstream media glided over the confession, but it is worth noting that early advocate John McCain as well as the much maligned George W. Bush and the brilliant David Petraeus all were able to imagine the surge’s success. By her support for the surge, Governor Palin was, too.
But I am NOT saying that Senator Obama’s breathtaking failure of imagination on the most consequential national security decision of the past four years makes him a less able candidate for national security leadership. After all, maybe he thought that our troops just weren’t up to the job, that they couldn’t do much but cling to their guns and pray for the best.
And I am NOT saying that Governor Palin is more qualified because of her experience related to foreign affairs, though it is vast by comparison with Senator Obama.
Let’s face it — neither has much in the way of direct experience in international policy. Senator Obama’s main claim to stature is co-sponsorship of an uncontroversial, entirely obvious bill regarding acquisition and disposal of Soviet-era weapons of mass destruction still in Russia – legislation that, while beneficial, displayed all the sophistication of an undergraduate term paper and on which he followed the lead of GOP co-sponsor Senator Richard Lugar, a true expert in this field.
But the world and its challenges are changing. Thanks to the surge’s unimaginable success, Iraq may be little more than a cleaning up operation for the next president. But with the economic rise of China and India and events in Russia, it seems clear that outside the Middle East, the big challenges will have to do with access to resources.
Both tickets have placed high emphasis on securing energy from, if not domestic sources, then at least friendly ones. Senator Obama initially put off limits the two forms of energy that are most within reach of current technology – offshore oil drilling and building more nuclear generating plants. He seems to be backing off that position, like so many others. But if he goes through with his threat to demand a renegotiation of NAFTA, he may well complicate access to the next most politically stable and friendly source of both petroleum and uranium: Canada.
By contrast, according to American foreign policy expert James Bennett, writing in this weekend’s London Sunday Telegraph, Palin’s celebrated pipeline deal included successful negotiations with the Canadian national and provincial governments. Because of its rich energy resources, Canada is about to become a far more important factor in US global policy. Obama has spent a good part of this campaign insulting and threatening this ally. Palin already has worked constructively with them.
But, as I say, experience is NOT the reasons that Governor Palin is better suited as a steward of our national security than Senator Obama. Here is the reason.
Presidents are surrounded with lots of foreign policy experts. Most of the National Security Council staff will be the same, whichever ticket wins. Both Obama and Palin are intelligent people who will quickly absorb their briefing books and lectures and within months be extraordinarily well versed in the full range of foreign policy issues.
But then something will happen and, not only will the president have make decisions, but it will be essential that he or she be able to stand firm. No quality is more fundamental to the success of a keeper of our security than strength. In recent weeks, one McCain ploy after another has thrown Senator Obama and his campaign. The senator has backed off one position after another that had been previously cast in cement. He and his campaign have acted deeply intimidated by McCain television ads – well, not ads actually broadcast on television, internet ads, an incredible display of weakness
Meanwhile, Governor Palin has uttered three critical words that mark her as having the strength of a Thatcher or a Reagan – the most telling words she said to Charlie Gibson: “You can’t blink.”
That’s what we learned this week. Under pressure, Senator Obama blinks. Under pressure, Governor Palin does not. That is why Governor Palin has emerged as the one better suited to assume our national security leadership, should she need to step in.
Clark S. Judge is managing director of the White House Writers Group, a policy and communications consulting firm based in Washington
The Price of Bush’s Commitment to Palestinian Statehood
By Elan Journo
On his recent visit to the Middle East, Vice President Cheney voiced the Bush administration’s belief that a Palestinian state is “long overdue” and vowed to help make that goal a reality. Many conservatives and liberals agree with the administration that America should help fulfill the long-deferred Palestinian aspirations to statehood. The idea is that in doing so we would go a long way toward dousing the flames of Islamist terrorism.
But does U.S. backing for Palestinian statehood advance our security?
Only if you think we’re better off fostering a new terrorist state.
That may seem excessively harsh given President Bush’s mantra that Palestinians just want “the opportunity to use [their talents and] gifts to better their own lives and build a future for their children.” The Bush line we keep hearing is that the terrorists and their supporters are but a fringe element that will be marginalized under the new state, which will coexist “side by side in peace” with Israel and the Western world.
But listen to Palestinian clerics at Friday sermons, calling for violent attacks on Israel. Look at the lurid posters in the homes and shops of ordinary Palestinians, passionately glorifying “martyrs” and terrorist kingpins. Look at their coordinated digging of tunnels to smuggle in weapons and explosives. Look at the popular collusion with Islamist militants and their stream of recruits. Recall the years of ferocious attacks against Israeli towns.
If the mass of Palestinians just want peace and a better life, they would not despise and war against the only state in the region, Israel, that protects individual rights and that offers a standard of living far superior to (even the richest) Arab regimes. They would be far better off, freer and safer, if they put away their rocks, bullets and dynamite belts and sought to live and work in Israel (as some once did).
Instead, they flood the streets to protest negotiations about peaceful co-existence with Israel. Ideologically, their dominant factions are the Islamic totalitarians of Hamas and the nationalist terrorists of Fatah. These differ only in their form of dictatorship–religious or ethnic. Both promise their followers, one way or another, to wipe out Israel.
That hostility to Israel, the only free nation in the Middle East, should make any U.S. president stand firmly against the Palestinian cause. Particularly in a post-9/11 world, Washington should recognize that U.S. security is strengthened by preventing Islamist terrorists from securing another stronghold and training ground.
Given the overwhelming evidence that it would undermine U.S. security, what explains the Bush administration’s come-hell-or-high-water promise to do “everything we can” to back a Palestinian state? It is the administration’s belief that America has a duty to ease the suffering of the world’s wretched, regardless of the cost in lives to us.
That’s why, after Palestinians brought Hamas to power in a landslide, Washington responded with “compassion” for their “humanitarian” needs. Of course the United States and its European allies felt compelled to “isolate” the Hamas regime by cutting off direct aid to the Palestinian Authority. But they refused to believe the Palestinians themselves should be held responsible for how they voted, because they’re already dirt poor. This meant suspending our judgment and absolving Palestinians of culpability for choosing murderers to lead them. So, despite the embargo on aid to the Hamas-led government, in 2006 U.S. aid to Palestinians increased by 17 percent to $468 million, propping up their terrorist proto-state.
This policy’s result is to endorse, facilitate, and vitalize Palestinian aggression. We’ve seen the unleashing of a popularly supported Hamas-Hezbollah war against Israel in 2006 and ongoing attacks springing from Gaza. Al Qaeda has reportedly already set up shop alongside other jihadists in the Palestinian territories. Just imagine the mushrooming of terrorist training camps and explosives factories under a sovereign Palestinian state. Imagine how emboldened jihadists will feel operating under a regime that Washington has created and blessed.
This is the price of a policy based not on furthering U.S. security, but on undeserved pity. This is the price of willfully ignoring the vile nature of Palestinian goals, treating these hostile people as above reproach and rewarding their irrationality.
Isn’t it time we demand a policy that puts our security first?
Elan Journo is a resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute (http://www.aynrand.org/) in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand–author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.” Contact the writer at media@aynrand.org.
On November 9, 1961, Samuel Goldwyn, the head of Samuel Goldwyn Studios, wrote a letter to Producer/Director Jerry Wald at 20th Century Fox. The letter reads, in part, as follows:
Dear Jerry:
…
Today we are at a very crucial period in history. Even if the cold war never develops into a hot one, our country still has its hands full all over the world. The pictures we send abroad have an effect in every corner of the globe.
Therefore, I feel we must exercise today a higher degree of self-discipline and self-censorship then ever before. We should never lose sight of the fact that, no matter how entertaining a picture may be or how much money it may make, it can do our country a great deal of harm if it plays into the hands of our enemies. [emphasis added] No one among us can serve as another’s conscience – but that is why it behooves every one of us to look at ourselves critically and completely honestly. We have a great responsibility in this regard – far greater than almost any other segment of our country – and we have to guide ourselves accordingly.
Naturally, what I feel in this regard is carried over into my opinion regarding the subject of film festivals which you mention.
…
Samuel Goldwyn must be turning in his grave to see his admonition ignored by today’s Hollywood, as anti-American picture after anti-American picture is released and plays into the hands of our enemies.
In the current issue of Global Politician, Antero Leitzinger, published an article about the source of Islamic terrorism and how it was taught by Communists and Socialists to the Muslims. The article begins:
This article traces the roots of Islamic terrorism, with special focus on Afghanistan. Notes are added on practical and philosophical problems of world media in finding the right track. From systematic errors in revealing little details, to serious misconceptions about basic facts and principles, we can relatively easily learn how much of “common knowledge” rests actually on superficial research and popular myths. Instead of becoming critical and aware of the traps laid around the issue, both Islamists and Islamophobes fail to recognize how they are manipulated.
Terrorism is real
Terrorism is not as difficult a concept as some claim. It is a political ideology (-ism) on the use of terror, which is arbitrary, unrestricted and unspecified fear. This excludes traditional warfare against regular armies and police forces, and individual assassinations of public figures.
Neither separatism nor criminal violence as such is necessarily terrorism. To call an act terrorism, we should always ask: Does this really spread blind terror among the general populace? A bomb blown in a market place, or in a civilian airplane, intends to create common fear among customers and bystanders alike, because just about anybody could become a victim. The victims are typically anonymous, and the very idea of the act was to cause damage or a credible threat. The assassination of a political leader, throwing stones on occupation troops, or bombing of enemy positions during a declared war or after an order to surrender has been given, may be repulsive and kill innocent people, but there is no terror, if no average “man of the street” needs to feel uneasy about his security the next day. No women or children should need to fear that they could be mistaken as presidents, soldiers, or military installations. Somebody may have bad luck and be targeted accidentally, but if it is terrorism, we will find ourselves asking: Why? What is the object?
Terrorism is rarely the ultimate end itself, as anarchy or communism is thought to be, but merely a method to promote some politics. That is why terrorists represent a political ideology. Even when they are in fact nothing but common criminals or psychopaths, terrorists make efforts to find a political excuse for their acts.
We know that not every political movement has created a terrorist splinter group, or served as an excuse for terrorism. Actually, terrorism has been the favourite method of extreme socialists only – both of the (left-wing) international, and the (right-wing) national varieties. Since the Jacobins of the French revolution held a “Reign of Terror” in 1794, the international socialists (communists) and national socialists (fascists) have shared a common tendency to use terrorism.
A clear definition of terrorism helps to identify and trace it through history. It can be dated and located. This makes it very real – and thus also possible to be exterminated.
How Socialists became Islamic terrorists
Modern terrorism was born within a year, 1967-1968. International socialists (communists) started the fashion all over the world simultaneously, which should make us suspicious about the common roots. National socialists followed suit, turning Marxists of Muslim origin into Islamists of Marxist origin.
In May 18th, 1967, Yuri Andropov took over the leadership of the KGB. The Russian security services evolved into a state within the Soviet state, as it became clear when Andropov became the communist party’s general secretary after Leonid Brezhnev’s death, in 1982. During Andropov’s era, which was far longer than that of any other KGB chief, the Soviet secret services supported international terrorism through satellite states and Marxist “liberation fronts”. “On becoming chairman of the KGB in 1967, Andropov immediately announced his intention to revive KGB ‘special actions’ as an essential tool of Soviet policy during the Cold War.” (Andrew & Mitrokhin, p. 374)
The man who became Andropov’s deputy was former Azerbaijani KGB chief Semyon Tsvigun, who committed suicide on January 19th, 1982. His wife was the sister of Brezhnev. Eduard Topol wrote a spy novel about the case, titled “Red Square”. In the novel, Tsvigun’s widow accuses Andropov for being an anti-Semite, organizing international terrorism, and having his subordinate assassinated. Reality, however, does not corroborate any rift within the KGB. Tsvigun’s son became a KGB officer too, and was appointed as a Soviet diplomat in Cairo from August 1984. Tsvigun’s son-in-law became the main supplier of arms to Islamist terrorists in Afghanistan, by 1995.
On June 2nd, 1967, violent student demonstrators met the Shah of Iran in West Germany. All of free Europe was plagued by student demonstrations in May 1968, causing a nearly revolutionary situation in France. Numerous left-wing terrorist cells were formed in Germany, Italy, and other western countries. Their activities peaked in 1977, after which the West German terrorists retired in communist East Germany.
The (North Irish) IRA and (Basque) ETA started their terrorism in 1968, with peaks around 1976. Andropov considered an IRA request for arms delivery for three years until subscribing it in 1972. (Andrew & Mitrokhin, p. 378 and 384-385)
German and Italian left-wing terrorists cooperated by summer 1969, and in October 1971, altogether 16 terrorist groups held a meeting in Florence, Italy. Beside the IRA and ETA, many Palestinian and Latin American (ERP, ELN, MLN, MIR) groups joined to the international terror network by 1973.
In the USA, Soviet agents incited racial tension by writings in the name of the Ku Klux Klan, and by a bomb explosion in New York City, in summer 1971. (Andrew & Mitrokhin, p. 238) The same year, Soviet agents made contacts to a Quebecois separatist group, the FLQ.
In Latin America, communist Cuba was the source of revolutionary activities in many countries, although the KGB kept its own agents there too. (Andrew & Mitrokhin, p. 386) In October 1967, “Che Guevara”, whose girl-friend was an East German, was executed in Bolivia, becoming a romantic idol for teenage girls. Thirty-four years later, his picture could be seen on the T-shirts of young Palestinian brawlers. In Mexico, the KGB was involved in student riots from July to October 1968, prior to the Olympic Games. Uruguay experienced urban guerrilla activities by the MLN, peaking between 1968 and 1972. Argentine followed between 1970 and 1975. Communists had big hopes on Chile, but were bitterly disappointed by the military coup in 1973.
By the end of the 1970s, communist optimism was definitely on the decline everywhere in the world. At that point, the KGB desperately needed any kind of a boost of revolutionary spirits. Surprisingly, the Middle East came to rescue.
In December 1967, a Lebanese Christian, George Habash, who had been a Pan-Arabic national socialist, had broadened his field by founding the PFLP, a Palestinian organization. Although it split already by the next year, the PFLP remained the most pro-Soviet Palestinian terrorist group, with widest global ties. It caused the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party to adopt the Palestinian cause in 1968. In July 1970, Andropov allowed the first direct Soviet arms delivery to the PFLP. From that on, both the KGB and – perhaps even more so – the Russian military intelligence, GRU, provided Palestinian terrorists with arms and training. (Segaller, p. 126-127; Livingston & Halevy, p. 140; Lunev, p. 80; Kuzichkin, p. 206; Andrew & Mitrokhin, p. 381) From 1972 on, this was co-ordinated by Habash, who had close connections to Japanese and Latin American terrorist groups. (Livingston & Halevy, p. 208-209)
The man chiefly responsible for exporting Palestinian terrorism was Wadi Haddad, deputy leader of the PFLP, recruited as agent “Natsionalist” by the KGB in 1970. Andropov revealed his aims in a report to Brezhnev himself: “The nature of our relations with W. Haddad enables us to control the external operations of the PFLP to a certain degree, to exert influence in a manner favorable to the Soviet Union and also to carry out active measures in support of our interests through the organization’s assets while observing the necessary conspirational secrecy.” (Andrew & Mitrokhin, p. 380)
The once fashionable airplane hijackings had been begun by the PFLP in July 23rd, 1968. At that time, the Soviet Union, having supported the establishment of Israel and armed its forces 20 years earlier, had already invested a lot of resources into the Palestinian cause and Arab Socialism. Arms had been initially smuggled through Egypt. (Barron, p. 77)
“By the summer of 1968, the Soviet Union had progressed far toward converting Egypt into its principal base of subversion against the Arab world.” (Barron, p. 62) Thirty-three years later, Egypt was the principal base of Islamic terrorists. Soviet Union, however, failed in Egypt. In May 1971, Anwar Sadat wiped out most of KGB agents. In July 1972, Soviet advisors were expelled from Egypt. Eight years later, Sadat paid for this with his life, being assassinated by members of an Islamist group. Sadat’s peace policy toward Israel made it easy for the remnants of the KGB network to ally with the right-wing Muslim Brotherhood. This is the background of Ayman az-Zawahiri, the second man of al-Qayda.
Yasser Arafat’s al-Fatah organization received its first Soviet arms shipment in September 1972. Palestinians were, however, split into pro-Iraqi and pro-Syrian parties and factions. Although both Iraq and Syria were ruled by an Arab Socialist Baath party, and extremely friendly toward the Soviet Union after the end of 1950s, the deepening friction between these two Arab states cut through the Palestinians, and frustrated Soviet efforts to unite Arabs against Israel and the western world.
The Yom Kippur War of 1973, and the subsequent oil embargo from October 1973 to March 1974, which was aimed against the USA, taught the KGB two lessons: that the traditional, orthodox Arab Socialist partners and their Palestinian proxies could not be trusted and achieved little through military endeavours and terrorism; but that the future was economic, and lay with the oil-fields in Saudi Arabia and Gulf emirates. Thus Political Islam, or Islamism, replaced Socialism as the most promising basis for winning Arab hearts and hurting western interests in the Middle East. After the debacle in Egypt, the KGB turned toward Saudi Arabia, where King Faysal had been assassinated in May 1975, and King Khalid ruled until 1982. Here, the KGB could find most valuable connections through the Muslim Brotherhood.
The key link may have been Muhammad Maruf ad-Dawalibi, former Prime Minister of Syria, and founder of the Islamic Socialist Front in autumn 1949. He had declared already in April 1950, that Arabs would prefer “thousands time more to become a Soviet Republic than to be spoils of Jews”. (Reissner, p. 332, 355 and 422-423) Dawalibi’s preference for Soviet rule had not been shaken by Soviet support for Israel as late as September 1951. Instead, he recommended Arab leaders to seek even harder for Soviet support. (Reissner, p. 357 and 366) Dawalibi was exiled from Syria, but he became a councellor of King Khalid, and the chairman of the Islamic Conference that convened in Pakistan in 1976. (Reissner, p. 394 and 423)
The article then goes on to explain the Soviet and Communist involvement in fomenting Islamic terrorism against the West.
Iran became Russia’s most loyal ally after the Islamic revolution in 1979. This relationship has lasted over two decades, and is still cherished by the Islamists among Shi’ite clergy and security services. When Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan later the same year, there was only one spontaneous demonstration in Tehran, after which Iran has tamely followed Russia’s actions against neighbouring Muslim people.
The Iranian revolution took the KGB by surprise, but it was a pleasant surprise, and the Soviet Union choose to side with the Islamist revolutionaries already by November 1978. Azerbaijan’s contemporary president, former party leader and KGB chief (a successor and friend of Tsvigun), Hayder Aliyev, was the expert on Middle East, who had soon convinced the Politburo, that Ayatollah Khomeini should be supported by the Soviet Union. (Taheri, p. 218) This assessment caused a permanent division within the Iranian communist (Tudeh) party, because it was instructed to support Khomeini despite the doubts of the party’s own general secretary. He was replaced by a relative of Khomeini. (Kuzichkin, p. 264 and 285)
Among the closest associates of Khomeini, there were many Communists who had conveniently grown beards. Mustafa Ali Chamran had studied in California and Egypt before he founded a Red Shi’ite secret society. His pupils included later foreign minister Ibrahim Yazdi, oil minister Mohammed Gharazi, and a Lebanese fellow student in Berkeley University, Hussein Shaikh al-Islam, who led the occupation of the US Embassy in Tehran. This occupation, shortly before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, focused Iranian radicalism into anti-Americanism. (Taheri, p. 78 and 139-140) Mohammed Beheshti, whose death at a bombing on June 28th, 1981, remained a mystery, had resided in East Germany. Khomeini’s early companion and foreign minister, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, was a link to Syria. Most left-wing radicals were repressed only after summer 1981, by which time many former Communists had successfully accommodated with the new regime. Both Ghotbzadeh and Chamran had received Palestinian terrorist training. As a student in the USA, Ghotbzadeh had been recruited by the GRU. (Livingston & Halevy, p. 153-154; Kuzichkin, p. 302)
“It is significant that anti-Americanism was first propagated as a major theme of Muslim fundamentalism by young men and women from Islamic countries who had spent time in the United States as students or workers.” (Taheri, p. 206) These included the founding father of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Said Qutb, who had lived in the USA for two years around 1949/1950. The four pilots of September 11th, 2001, included one native German citizen, whose Moroccan father was no Islamist at all, a Lebanese of liberal background, and a United Arab Emirates’ subject, both of whom had spent five years in Germany, and the Egyptian-born terrorist leader Muhammad Atta, who had immigrated into Germany nine years earlier.
Daniel Pipes’ article “The Western Mind of Radical Islam” describes well, how so many Islamic terrorists actually adopted more ideas from contacts to western society than from their own traditions: “Fundamentalist leaders tend to be well acquainted with the West, having lived there, learned its languages, and studied its cultures. … Indeed, the experience of living in the West often turns indifferent Muslims into fundamentalists. … In contrast to this ostentatious familiarity with Western ways, fundamentalists are distant from their own culture. … Having found Islam on their own as adults, many fundamentalists are ignorant of their own history and traditions.” (http://www.danielpipes.org/articles/199512.shtml)
This became very obvious through the biographies of those who committed the suicide attacks of September 2001, and who were typically from wealthy families, liberally educated, and had lived many years in Hamburg, London, and America. Pipes takes notice of the fact that “fundamentalist Muslims” (or rather, “Islamists”, as they care little of traditions and their true fundaments), have introduced distinctly Christian notions into their religion. He presents plenty of detailed examples, among others that “fundamentalists have turned Fridays into a Sabbath, something it had not previously been. … Ignorant of the spirit underlying the Shari’a, fundamentalists enforce it along territorial, not personal lines…” (http://www.danielpipes.org/articles/199512.shtml), and so forth.
It is a lengthy article, but for those who are interested in the history of how Islamic terrorism against the West began, it is important to understand the substance of this article. It goes on to explain the Soviet support of the Taliban and of Al-Queda. You will also get a better understanding of what is happening in Chechnya.
I highly recommend your reading this article for a complete understanding of the origins of Islamist terror.
BEAR TO THE RIGHT 