Terrorism/A New Sense of Professionalism
Ledeen, Michael
Michael Ledeen/Terrorism A NEW SENSE OF PROFESSIONALISM IT es been a banner decade for inter- national terrorism, but some people just aren't satisfied. You'd think both Michael Ledeen, TAS's...
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...But I don't expect something drastically new...
...Murdering Bashir Gemayel for President Assad of Syria, thus ensuring that Lebanon could not have a strong and stable government...
...he thinks there will be lots more, of a different and more frightening sort, and soon...
...William J. Murray is the author of the religious best seller, My Life Without God, as well as The Church Is Not For Perfect People...
...Keeping the money flowing from the suckers in Saudi Arabia and Mexico, along with the more friendly funding from the Soviet bloc, and the "insurance" payers from Western Europe, Latin America, and the Gulf...
...This is the universal pattern...
...This nice revolutionary conceit lasted only until bombs ruined the shopping atmosphere on the Champs Elysees, and today, thanks to Jacques Chirac and his extremely tough-minded associates, the terrorists in France have been dealt a severe blow...
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...Terrorism is doing just fine as it is, and a sharp increase in the stakes might finally produce a serious reaction from the American government (assuming that we get one of those in the coming years...
...It features informative charts as well as many photos of the author, behind Sandinista lines delivering medical...
...every Western country has had reason to believe that it would eventually come...
...Today there are virtually none of those, and the terrorist movements that afflict the world nowadays are, with very rare exceptions, state-sponsored...
...we did not understand the importance of the space race until Sputnik beeped at us from the heavens, and then we produced yet another crash program...
...These drastic changes took place only after years of bombings and assassinations, which shows, I think, that the publics in those countries -did not become indifferent to terror...
...All of this has been accomplished at very little cost, with traditional equipment, and relatively low-level labor...
...in fact, there is a concrete highway which runs from Texas to Nicaragua...
...You'd think both Michael Ledeen, TAS's regular "Press-watch" columnist, is a senior fellow in international affairs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C...
...Once it arrives, panic sets in, and the government invariably overreacts...
...and some of the analysts of terrorism, having predicted a technological escalation for the past decade, continue to foresee a new terrorist era replete with bioterrorism, chemoterrorism, and bignuclearbangterrorism...
...The terrorist future will therefore greatly resemble the terrorist past: bombs, guns, letter-bombs, hijackings, hostage-taking...
...And the time to do it is before it strikes, when one can organize intelligence networks, calmly prepare contingency plans, train the necessary special forces and ordinary police, and educate the public...
...news media and politicians won't like it —but then, truth is one of Bill Murray's strengths...
...There is no longer an ocean between us and a Communist country...
...These spasms last a few years, and then we return to our happy introversion, attempting to save the Republic from Robert Bork rather than worrying about the tens of thousands of Cubans, Iranians, and Palestinians who have entered this country over the past decade, some of whom must have organized sleeper terrorist cells throughout America...
...The prophets of even worse gloom and doom in the terrorist business argue that, since the public adjusts relatively quickly to "conventional terrorism," such acts lose their ability to terrorize, thus the need for escalation...
...Barely failing to blow up an El Al jumbo jet from London to Tel Aviv...
...The sponsors of terrorism want to be able to operate in the West (indeed, aside from the Middle East, that is where terrorism is most common...
...Unfortunately, the answer is most likely "yes...
...and so it goes...
...gi 72 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1987 It Can Happen Here...
...Look at France, which for centuries proclaimed itself the haven of the politically oppressed, even of "political refugees" who in.. may offend Yuppie intemationaliste — Paul Gottfried Editor, The World and I PUTTING AMERICA FIRST: A CONSERVATIVE TRADE ALTERNATIVE Edited by Anthony Harrigan Five lively essays make plain the harm done to the U.S...
...S till, there is unhappiness in the rank-and-file...
...We did not prepare for war until Pearl Harbor, and then we embarked on one of our famous crash programs...
...If you happen to read the Australian press, for example, you will discover that the Australian pilots are terribly upset at the almost total lack of security in their airports or on their aircraft...
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...In this book William J. Murray lays it out for all to see...
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...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1987 73...
...That is why it is harder to infiltrate the terrorist organizations, and why their activities are more efficient than in the bad old days...
...Airport security has improved, so the terrorists will be doing more with advanced forms of plastic explosives, some of which are very hard to detect...
...Jerry Falwell has this to say about Nicaragua: Portrait of a Tragedy: "William J. Murray knows Communism...
...Read carefully this very factual book...
...Iagree that the terrorists have to take stock, and I suspect that we will be seeing different tactics in the near future...
...The tactics of the terrorists are bound to change in response to our own defensive measures...
...True, the life of a terrorist is not what it once was...
...All of this has been bad news for the Syrian, Libyan, Iranian, Algerian, Czechoslovakian, Bulgarian, and other intelligence services who had been helping the Paris-based terrorist groups, and has forced a certain retrenchment...
...Barely failing to assassinate Margaret Thatcher...
...Until the terrorists have struck, the main preoccupation of the vast majority of politicians is with expanding the sphere of civil liberties to everyone, including those who will be tomorrow's terrorists...
...George Habash, one of the founding fathers of contemporary terrorism, has told us in a recent interview that while he has come to believe that terrorist violence is counterproductive, his comrades don't agree...
...But, then, this is our history, isn't it...
...They were even willing to sacrifice their own civil liberties in exchange for security...
...The school of thought that holds that terrorism will shortly go higher-tech rests its predictions on the notion that the basic goal of terrorist activity is to grab the attention of the media, and thereby terrorize the populace at large...
...terrorism is now a career choice...
...Destroying half the cabinet of South Korea...
...The terrorists have become professionals...
...If the strategy and hardware are unlikely to undergo any sort of qualitative change, there will nonetheless be some differences in the next few years...
...the terrorists and the experts would be content with an achievement list that would make any CEO proud: "Driving the Western world (United States, France, Great Britain, Italy, Israel) out of Lebanon with a few well-placed, well-timed, and well-publicized bombs...
...Box 515 • Addison, TX 75001 William J. Murray and Freedom Fighters Contra leader, Aldolfo Calero in prayer with Freedom's Friends' personnel: dulged in terrorism elsewhere...
...In the first place, who needs it...
...The threat inches closer to the back door of America daily...
...Conventional terrorism subverted democratic governments in Uruguay, Argentina, and Turkey, and led Italy, Great Britain, and Germany to adopt harsh legal measures that would have been unthinkable in normal times...
...This attitude, laudable in the abstract, has the paradoxical consequence of making things much worse than they need be when and if a serious terrorist assault occurs...
...Are we destined to repeat it...
...A national interest trade policy...
...The number of Communism's victims grows daily...
...This forecast rests upon an assessment of the prime movers...
...Some of the terrorists are unhappy because there is too much discipline inside the movements (they liked the old spontaneity better, and who can blame them...
...supplies and the Gospel to the Contras...
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...Nicaragua: Portrait of a Tragedy, contains all the information- you will need to inform-your friends and relatives of the growing Communist threat in the Americas: This.book contains over 190 pages of vital information depicting the-brutality of the Communist Sandinista government of Nicaragua...
...The major liberal U.S...
...Murdering various Americans (from military officers in Germany to Robert Stethem on TWA flight 847...
...Furthermore, the sponsors of terrorism know that there is a point beyond which no government, even the laid-back administrations in the Western world these days, will tolerate the continued existence of terrorist networks in their countries...
...Thus far, no one has prepared for terrorism, even though...
...Therefore, they will do their best to keep terrorism on an even keel, vetoing more drastic actions if they can...
...AS12 ^ Please send me copies of Nicaragua: Portrait of a Tragedy for $6.95 plus $1.50 shipping and handling per order...
...They believe, rightly in my view, that it is only a matter of time before Australia is forced to fight terrorism...
...Senator Jesse Helms says: "It is a tragedy of major proportions that so few seem to understand or even care about the peril threatening the very survival of our country and its freedoms if the Soviets achieve their goal of taking over Latin America...
...And many nations have managed to get inside their own terrorist organizations, so we can expect a certain crossover of action squads from onecountry to another...
...While there was some small chance of such breakthroughs so long as there was still a modicum of independenceamong the terrorist groups, now that the intelligence services of Soviet-bloc and radical Arab states, along with the occasional maverick like Iran, are more solidly in the driver's seat, I expect that we will not see such a melodramatic escalation...
...And so, just as we produced the shameful reaction to the "yellow peril" after Pearl Harbor, we shall go through another xenophobic seizure when the terrorist war arrives on our shores, as it surely must...
...The conservative alternative...
...No democratic society these days is permitted by its legislature, .its media, and its public to do the prudent preparations that make terrorism, easily manageable...
...At the moment, the terrorists are thinking deep operational thoughts...
...The more interesting question is not what terrorism will look like, but what form counter-terrorism will take...
...These self-proclaimed experts have never lived in a country afflicted by conventional terrorism, for if they had, they would not produce this silly argument...
...once, there were real terrorist movements that emerged from the fires of social indignation...
...And, apparently, our destiny as well...
...Yet this is our history...
...20045...
...their rage and frustration grew to the point where they demanded action from their governments...
...Ground-level security is now better at government buildings, so the terrorists will be experimenting with new "delivery systems" like drone aircraft...
...Even more surprising, the French have been working closely with their Spanish and Italian counterparts to attack the Red Brigades and the Basque killers from ETA...
...It will shock you...
...He knows all, too well that Communism's other name is DEATH...
...by "free" trade, despite apologists to the left and right...
...A certain amount of this has been seen in the latest generation of "Euroterrorism," with Germans operating in France, and the like...
...there is no terrorism to speak of inside the efficient dictatorships of Black Africa and Asia, nor in the totalitarian regimes of the Soviet bloc), in order to support their ideological claims that Western society is oppressive, and to destabilize the feebler democracies...
...This book contains a sound history of how and why a Communist dictatorship came to flourish in Central America...
...Seriously disrupting life in several NATO countries (Italy, France, Greece, and Spain are the most notable...
...Soviet helicopter gunships now operate just south of Mexico...
Vol. 20 • December 1987 • No. 12
