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The Axis of Terror: Carlos the Jackal pledges alliance to Osama bin Laden (How to kill the U.S.)
The Weekly Standard via Benador Associates ^ | November 24, 2003 | Amir Taheri

Posted on 11/19/2003 5:47:50 PM PST by quidnunc

Few convicted murderers and hijackers accept the label "terrorist." One who does — indeed, who embraces terrorism as among man's "noblest pursuits" — is a Venezuelan now serving a life sentence for murder in France. He is Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as "Carlos the Jackal."

He has just published a book in French to announce his conversion to Islam and present his strategy for "the destruction of the United States through an orchestrated and persistent campaign of terror." Entitled "Revolutionary Islam" (Editions du Rocher, 2003) and published under the name Ilich Ramírez Sánchez-CARLOS, the book urges "all revolutionaries, including those of the left, even atheists," to accept the leadership of Islamists such as Osama bin Laden and so help turn Afghanistan and Iraq into the "graveyards of American imperialism."

Son of a militant Communist, Ilich was sent to Moscow to study at Patrice Lumumba University, an institution set up by the KGB to train terrorists from the Third World. That was in the 1970s, when the most fashionable cause was opposition to the U.S. intervention in Indochina.

Ilich opted for the less fashionable cause of Palestine, and soon moved to Lebanon, where he trained for operations organized by George Habash's People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Western intelligence services first noticed Ilich when he murdered two French policemen and a Lebanese informant in Paris in 1975. But the peak of his career came in 1975, when he led the team that took 11 OPEC oil ministers hostage in Vienna, then flew them to Algiers.

He spent most of the next 20 years on the run, living under assumed identities, constantly changing protectors, until his Sudanese friends finally betrayed him six years ago, when they allowed French authorities to abduct him from his home in Khartoum and fly him to Paris for trial.

In his book, Carlos recounts that he was born into a "fairly prosperous" bourgeois family. His father had attended a French school run by Catholic priests but soon rejected their beliefs. "Having lost faith in God," Carlos says, his father "looked to Marx and Lenin to fill at least part of the gap." Sánchez père was so passionate about his new creed that he named all three of his sons after the founder of Bolshevism: Vladimir, Ilich, and Lenin.

The chief interest of Carlos's book, however, lies not in the reminiscences of a bit player from the 1970s, but in the light it sheds in two areas. First, it recounts how Arab states like Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq routinely used terrorism as an instrument of state policy, often with support from the Soviet Union and its allies. And second, it illuminates the connection between radical atheism and radical religion, showing how one ideology can serve as the antechamber to another seemingly its opposite. Just as Carlos's father made Marxist-Leninist ideology his religion, so Carlos has turned his new religion into the ideology of "revolutionary Islam."

By the mid-1980s Carlos had decided that Marxism-Leninism was a dying creed. Yet its goal, the destruction of imperialism personified by the United States, remained in his view "the highest goal of humanity." Carlos had also concluded that the United States could not be destroyed by any military rival. What was needed was a campaign of terror that would separate the United States from its allies and then destroy its self-confidence. This campaign would require a large number of volunteers ready both to kill and to die for the cause. Carlos saw that only revolutionary Islam could recruit the large numbers of killers and martyrs necessary to destroy the United States.

Carlos claims that terrorism is "the cleanest and most efficient form of warfare." By killing civilians, he argues, the terrorist saps the morale of the enemy and forces its leadership to submit to the demands of the revolution or surrender. By killing a few, the terrorist saves the lives of the many. He cites several examples.

-snip-

(Excerpt) Read more at benadorassociates.com ...


TOPICS: Extended News; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: amirtaheri; carlosthejackal; islamocommies; jihad; kgb; patricelumumbaschool; pflp; redjihad; russia; stoptheexcerpts
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To: Sabertooth
He is Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as "Carlos the Jackal."

Why do I know this name?

21 posted on 11/19/2003 9:27:49 PM PST by JustPiper (All 19 of the hijackers entered the U.S. on valid visas- 18 of 19 had State Driver's Licenses!!!)
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To: jocon307
See also, about a much more dangerous group:

The Axis of Chaos, and its War on the Geneva Convention

22 posted on 11/19/2003 9:42:29 PM PST by mrustow (no tag)
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To: Sabertooth
Is this new monster revolutionary nihilism?
23 posted on 11/19/2003 9:44:00 PM PST by mrustow (no tag)
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To: quidnunc
Carlos does not say why it is good for mankind to destroy the United States.

The answer is simple - we defeated Communism.

It is the same reason that the liberals in this country and in Europe hate the United States. We destroyed the great Socialist Experiment that was the great hope of mankind. Look at Hillary. Ask her if she loves her country. Her answer - she loves what this country could be. She means the United Socialist America. That is just the way leftists think. They want a socialist-Marxist world and they realize that there is nothing to stop them except the United States of America. We are their natural enemy and it should not surprise anyone to see the leftovers from the Soviet Union and the lovers of the Soviet Union joining with the Islamic radicals to try to defeat this country. They will fail just like the Soviets failed.

24 posted on 11/19/2003 9:58:24 PM PST by InterceptPoint
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To: quidnunc
Who's brilliant idea is it, to give him resources to write, communicate with the outside?

I dare say the safety of world citizens is best maintained by keeping these types silent, best dead.
25 posted on 11/19/2003 10:57:04 PM PST by truth_seeker
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To: Sabertooth
"Anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are the common currencies of tyranny and terror."

" Wonder why?"

Bl**dy good question BUMP!

26 posted on 11/19/2003 11:07:36 PM PST by mitch5501 (by the grace of God,I am what I am)
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To: Sabertooth
"Funny thing is, we don't get our self-confidence from our allies."

Yup...and your staunchest allies realise this.

God bless America.

27 posted on 11/19/2003 11:12:59 PM PST by mitch5501 (by the grace of God,I am what I am)
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To: jocon307; cajungirl
The feckless French have made a sort of hero of Carlos in prison. He was allowed to marry a "fan" and has visitation, and a new family with them.
28 posted on 11/19/2003 11:21:00 PM PST by Travis McGee (----- www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com -----)
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To: Sabertooth
May he rot in he** ...


29 posted on 11/20/2003 5:16:31 AM PST by MeekOneGOP (I won! I won! http://rmeek141.home.comcast.net/LotteryTicketRutRoh.JPG)
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To: quidnunc
Carlos the Jackass pledge of alliance is DOA. Life goes on.
30 posted on 11/20/2003 5:33:53 AM PST by PGalt
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To: livius
Amazing, the web of conspiracy, which weaves from Russia's socialism still today in the West. The Chap 11 Bankruptcy must be maintained on the Soviet Bear until her cubs are ready to join the free world.
31 posted on 11/20/2003 10:09:04 PM PST by Jumper
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To: Jumper
Amazing, the web of conspiracy, which weaves from Russia's socialism still today in the West.

One poster pointed out that somebody was carrying the old Soviet flag in yesterday's anti-Bush demonstrations in London.

32 posted on 11/21/2003 7:50:45 AM PST by livius
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