More from Amir Taheri. This time he’s reviewing a book recently published by Carlos the Jackal.
For those who don’t know Carlos was the Venezuelan-born, so-called left-wing, international terrorist who attracted notoriety for taking 11 OPEC oil ministers hostage in 1975 and who was subsequently sheltered by various dodgy third-world regimes until the French authorities did a deal with Sudan and picked him up in Khartoum in the mid-nineties.
In the book review Taheri explains what Carlos has been thinking about in jail.
Carlos…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
Where were the volunteers to come from ? You’ve guessed it
Carlos saw that only revolutionary Islam could recruit the large numbers of killers and martyrs necessary to destroy the United States.
Out goes his twisted form of socialism as a supposed rationale for his crimes and in comes revolutionary Islam. What’s more
He 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.”
The childish loathing of the US Carlos exhibits is so strong that he is prepared to jettison one perverted ideology, which held throughout his life until now, for another (philosophically very different) ideology because the latter has an endless supply of naive suicide-bombers who are prepared to strike against what he considers US interests.
It’s sad that there are people who let their hate drive logic into the ground. The trouble is, it’s not just Carlos who is suffering from it.
Thanks to Damien Penny
