Posted on 07/20/2003 5:40:53 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
The notorious ‘Carlos the Jackal’ has written a boring tome about theories of Islamic revolution. U.S. neocons will probably love it
July 17 — Remember when “Carlos the Jackal” was Mr. Terrorist? Those were the days, in the 1970s and ’80s, when America’s chronic war was against godless communism, and Carlos was about as communist and godless as they got. The Venezuelan-born murderer and hostage-taker was a whiskey-swilling, Havana-smoking libertine; a self-described “professional revolutionary in the old Leninist tradition,” he styled himself the playboy of the anti-Western world.
WELL, CARLOS (real name: Ilich Ramírez Sánchez) has just come out with a book, and it may be the first of many. He’s now a lifer in French prison, he’s only 53, he’s got plenty of time to write and European publishers are hungry for his tales of booze, babes and bombings. But Carlos, for the moment, wants us to believe he’s found God. Or Allah, if you will.
The title of his tome translates as “Revolutionary Islam,” and parts of it read like fan mail to those Muslim heroes who replaced Marx and Lenin on the Jackal’s hit parade. No. 1, of course, is Osama bin Laden, whom Carlos calls “luminous” and “the living symbol of Jihad.” Writing of September 11, the Jackal says “the collapse before the cameras of those insolent twin towers, which stood there in defiance of the Third World’s misery [shook] the West out of its somnambulant torpor.”
Frankly, the Jackal’s book put me in a somnambulant torpor. (Don’t look for excerpts in Maxim anytime soon.) Carlos gives only a quick glimpse of his own career as a freelance terrorist who did most of his work for Palestinian paymasters. There are a few modest teases about his life with his lovers. London, Moscow, Budapest, Amman, Damascus, Beirut and Paris are cities “that will be part of my spirit always, because they’re definitely linked with the four great loves of my life, and no two loves are the same.” But Carlos, nine years into his prison term, is courting French intellectuals these days.
They’re vulnerable targets. When the Berlin Wall came crashing down in 1989, it crushed their comfortable left-wing prejudices, and many French intellectuals have been more than a little frustrated ever since. Bereft of a credible ideology, they embraced negativism and nihilism, mainly in the form of anti-Americanism and no-globalism. So why not Islamism, which is, God knows, capable of being all those things?
Carlos, the gnomelike little man who once held OPEC ministers for ransom in Vienna and shot down unarmed French policemen in Paris, certainly thinks that way. The Jackal spends page after page juxtaposing arguments for dialectical materialism (whoa! only in France …) and the quasi-apocalyptic rhetoric of the jihadists: “The Third World War has begun, but the United States was the sole initiator. America declared war on humankind.” Yet even the French aren’t buying this stuff. The book appeared in late June and since then has sunk without a trace.
American right-wing intellectuals, on the other hand, probably will love it. Carlos’s book is written testament to the notion, increasingly popular at the American Enterprise Institute and in the pages of The New Republic, that today’s Islamists draw their inspiration not from old-time religion (which is, er, good) but from old-time leftists (who are, emphatically, bad). And while neocons may not yet be reading the Jackal, they’re eating up the work of French scholar Olivier Roy like so much chicken soup for the soul. Al Qaeda, writes Roy, is “a junction of a radicalized Islam with a shrill anti-imperialism reshaped by globalization.” As spun by the neocons, this “neofundamentalism” suggests a seamless skein of conspiracy: communists inspire Islamists; the evil empire morphs into the axis of evil.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.com ...
that today’s Islamists draw their inspiration not from old-time religion (which is, er, good) but from old-time leftists (who are, emphatically, bad).Ignoring the snide comment about 'old time religion'--as if there is a reasonable parallel between radical Islam and Judaism or Christianity-- the Islamists don't draw their inspiration from the old-time leftists, but rather the old-time leftists are now drawing their inspiration from Islamists. Take, for example, Ramsey Clark (please).
'Islam has probably a billion and a half adherents today. And it is probably the most compelling spiritual and moral force on earth today.'and
'Islam is the best chance the poor of the planet have for any hope of decency in their lives. It is the one revolutionary force that cares about humanity...'And note that this is not particularly new. Carlos the Jackal didn't suddenly come to believe this to write books. Notice that the article points out that much of his terrorist work was done for the Jew hating Palestinians.
Sex, guns, rock-n-roll with an Islamic beat. Allah would love it.
Why Dickey bothered to write this garbage I will never know.Reflex. It hit too close to home, and so he needed to turn it into an attack on the 'neocons'.
And now we're coming to kick your asses.
Bad move.
Yes, and more and more folks are gonna wish they hadn't woken us up.
Here's what the situation is, certain members of the Hate America crowd gravitate to whatever the strongest anti-American force is out there. When the commies were 10ft tall, Carlos was a commie. When the Islamicists appear to kill the most Americans, Carlos becomes an Islamicist. Communism was the strongest moral force for Ramsey Clark, now Islam is moral force. For Ramsey Clark, 'moral' can be defined as 'most anti-American'.
Yes, I seem to remember Admiral Yamamoto saying something of significance, right after Pearl Harbor.
He subscribes to the notion that wealth is something you steal, or divide up, rather than something you create. A good part of humanity agrees with him, which is one reason for the misery he refers to.
French intellectuals... bereft of a credible ideology, they embraced negativism and nihilism...
Nihilism is the underlying force behind leftist politics and radical islam alike, the writer has that one nailed. It is the view, not necessarily fully articulated, that the world is flawed and must be re-built, even if it must first be destroyed.
today’s Islamists draw their inspiration not from old-time religion (which is, er, good) but from old-time leftists (who are, emphatically, bad).
Actually, what they both have in common is precisely that they both drink from the same nihilist well. If "old time religion" is nihilist, its effects would be the same. What stands in opposition to nihilism is the notion, again not always fully articulated, that humans are agents, not of consumption or destruction, not plants in a garden to be tended, but agents of creation. Thus the clerks and managers at work in the Towers were not living off third world misery, but were the great challenge to it.
Wealth is created, of course, it is the byproduct of the creative work of millions. Misery rules where creation is stifled, and misery recedes where creation is encouraged and fostered and protected by norms and traditions. Too many people, even people on our side politically, believe that wealth is a function of greed; accepting this heresy opens the door to the Carlos'es of this world. Wealth is not a function of greed, but of creation. Greed is the great destroyer of wealth, in that people are led to consume their seedcorn. The man who seems driven to build and to create is not greedy, even if he misunderstands his own motives as greed. The man who builds is acting out his destiny by acts of creation.
The Carlos'es of this world will never understand this.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.