Posted on 11/28/2001 2:06:01 PM PST by veronica
The Third World's love affair with Islamic fanatics
I first realised that militant Islam was beginning to provide the ideological leadership for the Third World as a whole when I attended the mass rally at the ANC's national conference in 1992.
It was an emotional occasion. The organisers announced to the vast crowd packed into Durban's King's Park stadium that delegates from all over the world were in attendance.
As the list was read out, there was a spontaneous cheer for Sweden: all the ANC activists knew that the Swedes had been generous supporters. This was easily eclipsed by the roar of approval that greeted the Cuban delegates.
But the greatest roar, and a standing ovation, came when it was announced that there was a delegate from Iraq. Suddenly, one noticed a flowering of Saddam Hussein T-shirts. Muslims probably accounted for less than one per cent of the crowd, which was overwhelmingly Christian.
But this was not long after the Gulf War, when Iraq had appealed for Muslim solidarity against the Great Satan. It should not be forgotten how seductive that appeal was - it swept even Yasser Arafat off his feet, and Muslims from Indonesia to West Africa enjoyed the thrill of this emotional jihad.
Non-Muslims enjoyed it, too. Although Iraq had been defeated, Saddam was spitting defiance at America and that meant he was still a hero. The Third World respects power like nothing else. Given this fact, it was of cardinal importance that the West should destroy him completely, and it hadn't.
After the fall of Kabul, this is a lesson we need to learn: only the extirpation of the Taliban and bin Laden will convey the right message. Why is the Third World so anti-Western?
Most ex-colonial states absorbed a good dose of Leninist anti-imperialism during their liberation struggles, and sympathised with Soviet tirades against America. The fall of Communism suddenly deprived the so-called non-aligned bloc of the leadership it had implicitly accepted on this issue.
In effect, Saddam Hussein filled the vacuum. As the Nineties progressed, this identification hardened as it became clear that the Third World's warriors against America were no longer North Korean, Chinese or Vietnamese. They were Muslim radicals.
Third World radicals, who had always idolised those most intransigent in the face of American power, such as Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro, could not help being impressed by the even greater intransigence displayed by the kamikaze tactics of Islamic fundamentalists.
In South Africa, we even had one provincial premier and Christian minister - the Rev Makhenesi Stofile - declare after September 11 that the Americans had it coming. All of which has wider implications for today's non-Muslim Third World than is often realised.
We should remember that Third World nations have naturally supported the struggles to liberate colonies anywhere in the world. In the Fifties, this meant French and British colonies; in the Sixties and Seventies, the Portuguese colonies; then Zimbabwe, Namibia and finally South Africa.
What was left was more problematic: the Falklands, Gibraltar, the Western Sahara. The only remaining "colony" that fitted the campaigning habits of a lifetime was Israel.
Here, recognisably white Western settlers were oppressing a recognisably non-Western population, whose representatives were seen as brothers-in-arms at conferences at which they rubbed shoulders with other Third World leaders.
Thus, attention came to focus ever more squarely on Israel; and, if Israel was a colony, its metropolitan power was America. Much of the Third World has accepted this definition of the situation, and is therefore lined up behind Muslim leadership - a situation pregnant with menace for Israel, and now equally for America.
Just as the Algerian war led to bombs in Paris and the Irish struggle to explosions in London, so September 11 is understood in much of the Third World as the moment when the struggle was brought back to the metropolis.
The only solution, seen in such terms, is the complete "decolonisation" of Israel: a withdrawal of American support for Israel as complete as the French withdrawal of support for French Algeria.
This vision of the future will become increasingly powerful in all those international forums, such as the UN, in which the Third World has a majority voice.
Who manufactures the Mercava, the Lavi, the Uzi and the Desert Eagle?
More hallucinating. As if more Jews don't live away from Israel than in it.
I repeat:
Who subsidizes their civilian economy so their own military establishment can spend more than the country can afford?57 posted on 11/30/01 11:06 AM Pacific by AGAviator
The lesson to be learned is you don't have one without the other.
We already have plenty of useful Israel uber alles idiots, make yourself at home.
The point that it's not a Third World phenomenon is clearly too complex for you to grasp.
Just to make sure you're over waaay your head:
If Islamic countries are so bad, then why is Israel allying with Turkey, which is beating up the Orthodox Greeks over Cyprus?
The Greek antipathy towards the Israeli state is increased by the Israeli's alliance with the Greek's enemies. And again, the point is it's not Third World people exclusively, so get used to it.
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