Real War (7 page)

Economic development will make Latin America an even more tempting target for Soviet expansionism. But by demonstrating that free economies produce progress, Latin American
political leaders will enormously strengthen their hand against revolutionary leftist elements.

In everything that we do, we must remember that
how
we do it counts more with our proud and sensitive Latin friends than with any other people in the world. It is vital that we treat them as partners, not as patients; and, as the giants in this area grow, we must acknowledge their new status in the world. We must learn not only to take our Latin neighbors seriously, but to treat each nation individually, just as we do the nations of Europe. We must also remember that these are proud people, who will not be browbeaten into making our values their own.

If World War III is defined in one way by the tide of refugees, it is defined in another way by the tactic of terrorism. The first shows the human cost. The second shows the Soviets' inhuman contempt for even the most basic of civilized standards. In recent years the Soviets have stepped up their terrorism campaign with devastating effect.

Many of those who romanticize revolution prefer to view terrorism merely as one of the ills of modern society, or as an outraged response to intolerable social conditions. But “senseless” terrorism is often not as senseless as it may seem. To the Soviets and their allies, it is a calculated instrument of national policy.

An international fraternity of terrorists, with the Soviet Union as the chairman of the rush committee, has enabled the Russians to engage, as Senator Henry Jackson has put it, in “warfare by remote control” all over the world. Other members of the international club include North Korea, Cuba, South Yemen, East Germany, Libya, and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Malcontents from all over the world are trained by them—many at the appropriately named Patrice Lumumba Friendship University in Moscow—in the arts of kidnapping, assassination, sabotage, bomb making, and insurrection, and then sent off to ply their trade. Their tutors are
careful to keep them well supplied with weapons and to provide sanctuary when they need it.

One of the most famous alumni recruited by the KGB for Patrice Lumumba Friendship University is the Venezuelan-born terrorist known as “Carlos”; or “The Jackal.” The Venezuelan Communist Party footed the bill for Carlos' “education,” and he has since used it to kidnap for ransom eleven participants in an OPEC conference of oil ministers in 1975, as well as to assassinate numerous businessmen, intelligence agents, and innocent bystanders. Carlos has won celebrity status, but there are many more like him who are less famous.

The Soviets, Libya, and the PLO were all heavily involved in the campaign to overthrow the Shah. The quasi-anarchy that followed his downfall in Iran provided the perfect culture medium in which fanaticism and terrorism together could flourish, and could be exploited by those whose calculated policy it is to exploit fanaticism and terrorism. The “students” who took over the American Embassy and seized the American hostages were clearly taught by experts in things other than the Koran, and the manipulators of that exercise gave international terrorism new dimensions of subtlety and effrontery. They also demonstrated what we invite when, like the baby and the bathwater, we mindlessly throw out authority along with authoritarianism. The guns are not put away; they simply are taken over by the mob.

Even as the American hostages were being held, across the Persian Gulf another terrorist team staged a meticulously prepared attack, breathtaking in its sheer audacity, on the holiest shrine of all Islam: the Grand Mosque at Mecca. The 500 who took part were led by a small group, apparently trained in South Yemen, the Soviet proxy state on the Arabian peninsula. Their cover story was religious fanaticism; their real intent was political: to undermine the stability of Saudi Arabia. The terrorists were so concerned with disguising their origins that they deliberately burned and mutilated the faces of their dead. Their leaders had been expertly schooled in guerrilla tactics, which enabled them to smuggle large quantities of food and modern weaponry into the Grand Mosque, take it over, and hold it for two weeks before finally being ousted with the help
of 1,000 members of the National Guard, with hundreds killed in the fighting.

In Nicaragua the Sandinist offensive was aided by what British columnist Robert Moss calls “a miniature international Communist brigade, including ‘volunteers' from West Germany's terrorist underground.”

Fidel Castro was involved in terrorist activities in South America long before he came to power in Cuba, and he has sponsored them ever since.

Terrorism also plays a key role in communist “wars of liberation.” The British expert on revolutionary war, Sir Robert Thompson, has pointed out that it is crucial to understand the relationship between the guerrilla cause and their organization. In most cases, the cause that originally draws people to the guerrilla organization is not love of communism but hatred of foreigners. Many people joined Mao Zedong's guerrilla forces in order to fight the Japanese invaders between 1937 and 1945, Tito's forces to fight the Nazis during World War II, and Ho Chi Minh's to fight the French from 1946 to 1954. The communists were, in all cases, only one of many groups fighting the foreigners; but they were the most ruthless and effective.

Thompson notes that once the original cause has been attained, the key issue is the remaining efficiency of the guerrilla organization. Once the French, Japanese, or Nazis are gone, how can the communists rally the population? Love of communism or hatred of rival national leaders is not enough; terrorism is necessary to maintain organizational discipline and preserve power for the leaders. A prominent German journalist, Uwe Siemon-Netto, recently provided a vivid illustration of how communist guerrilla groups use terrorism to effect their purposes. Siemon-Netto, who accompanied a South Vietnamese battalion to a village the Vietcong had raided in 1965, reported:
“Dangling from the trees and poles in the village square were the village chief, his wife, and their twelve children, the males, including a baby, with their genitals cut off and stuffed into their mouths, the females with their breasts cut off.” The Vietcong had ordered everyone in the village to witness the execution. “They started with the baby and then slowly worked their way up to the elder children, to the wife, and
finally to the chief himself. . . . It was all done very coolly, as much an act of war as firing an anti-aircraft gun.” He noted that this was no isolated case: “It became routine. . . . Because it became routine to us, we didn't report it over and over again. We reported the unusual, like My Lai.”

This is how the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong won the hearts and minds of the rural population—by cold-blooded butchering intended to intimidate those who were left.

Terrorism can strike at the heart of Western civilization as well. The Soviets secretly subsidized the Baader-Meinhof gang in West Germany. In Italy, in March of 1978 Aldo Moro, former Premier and the leading candidate for the presidency, was kidnapped and his five bodyguards shot in cold blood by the Red Brigades. Italy was traumatized as he was held captive for nearly two months before he was gruesomely assassinated, his body deposited in the back seat of an abandoned car in the center of Rome. There were more than 2,100 terrorist attacks in Italy in 1977, and the number rose in 1978.

Dr. Ray Cline—a former CIA official now with Georgetown University—points out that the current wave of world terrorism began after 1969, when the KGB succeeded in having the PLO accepted at the Kremlin as a major political instrument in the Middle East. The Soviets then proceeded to boost PLO terrorism by providing money, training, and weapons and by coordinating communications. What the Soviets and their equally conscience-free allies have done is to create an “international troublemaking system” that trafficks in wholesale murder for political purposes.

Terrorism threatens all governments except those engaged in it. All therefore must join together in developing tactics to deal with it. The number of international terrorist incidents nearly doubled between the first nine months of 1978 and the same period of 1979; according to one estimate, 60 percent of the terrorist incidents that have taken place in the last decade have occurred in the last three years. Not surprisingly, this huge upsurge in terrorism occurred immediately after the CIA was de-fanged and demoralized in the wake of sensationalized investigations by Congress. Restoring the ability of the intelligence community to protect us is essential if we are to deal
with the problem of terrorism before it gets even further out of hand. But trying to put out the fire after it is blazing is not enough. It is necessary to go to the heart of the problem—those who support terrorism, the major culprit being the Soviet Union.

While it has been relentless, the Soviet expansionist push has seldom been reckless. The Soviet leaders are aggressors, but they are cautious aggressors. They make most of their moves slowly and subtly, taking care to disguise them so as not to rouse the “sleeping giant” of the West from its slumber.

They try to strike where least expected, when least expected, in the least expected way. Their preferred method is to provoke disorder and chaos in a targeted country, and then to move in and pick up the pieces after the established order has collapsed.

They are professional revolutionaries, and one of the tenets of their professionalism is to stay out of sight while the old regime is being brought down, leaving the amateurs—the genuine patriots, the nationalists, the idealists—out front. Television shows us the amateurs storming into the streets; it does not reveal the professionals calling the shots from behind the scenes, plotting the capture of the new regime even while directing the overthrow of the old.

With seductive slogans designed to deceive, with a small but efficient cadre of ruthless terrorists, with cynical leaders willing to promise anything for the future as long as they can gain power now, the professional revolutionaries move like hot knives through butter in societies that have come untracked. As chaos spreads in the wake of upheaval, they alone are marching silently in lockstep—their eyes fixed on the armories, the secret police files, the key posts in the new government, the malcontents in the armed services, the labor unions that run crucial industries, the newspapers, the radio stations, the vacant police
chief jobs. Positions are won, workers are stirred up, opponents are arrested, political rivals are assassinated, and when all is ready the
coup de grâce
is delivered.

This is the communist recipe for revolution. It enabled Lenin to depose the moderate Premier Alexander Kerensky only eight short months after Kerensky's forces had ousted the Tsar in the first Russian Revolution. Lenin himself summed up its essential cynicism when he declared privately that “we will support Kerensky as the rope does the hanged man.” Since 1917 the Soviets have bottled their patented product and exported it to the rest of the world.

The Soviets thrive on chaos, confusion, fear; they know that in desperate circumstances people will reach for desperate means. Communism offers the slogan of “liberation,” the promise of order; it tells the “outs” that it will put them “in,” the underdogs that they will be top dog. It speaks in terms of passionate certainty, and this appeals to people awash in uncertainty.

The Soviets know that war, revolution, and economic depression can destroy the fabric of a society and make the siren song of communism sound sweeter. When people feel panic, tyranny can look attractive if it promises order. Chaos, war, and revolution are thus the natural allies of communism, just as famine, conquest and slaughter ride alongside the fourth horseman of the apocalypse, death.

Knowing this, the Russians try, by whatever means they can, to exacerbate tensions, to stir up discontent, to foment wars and revolutions. They do not want human needs met. They do not want problems between nations solved. They want to exacerbate the problems in order to seize the nation.

Because the Soviets are poised to exploit them, disorder and chaos are the greatest enemies of freedom today. Those who are unrealistically impatient for progress do the world a great disservice when they convulse vulnerable societies with non-negotiable demands; however pure their own intentions, the convulsion may open the door to a totalitarian regime. Looking back, we must ask ourselves: What would have happened if the Soviet Union had been on the scene during the American Revolution?

The American colonies fought a war of independence for
seven years. It took six more years before the Constitution was adopted, and two more after that before the Bill of Rights was added. Even then, tensions and inequities persisted that eventually led to a brutal civil war. Our country had time to sort out its problems, protected as it was by two oceans from the outside world. People striving for liberty today do not have the same luxury. The road for them will be much more difficult. They too need time. They too need protection.

The Russians play chess. In chess a player gains an advantage by eliminating as many of his opponent's men as possible. But chess masters know that the game can be won when there are still many pieces left on the table. All that is necessary is that the opponent's king be immobilized, hemmed in by threats on all sides so he cannot move.

The king in the Western chess set is the United States. We are the principal obstacle between the Soviet Union and its goal of world domination. The Soviets know they will never be able to outproduce us economically. They also know they can only hope to overwhelm us militarily if our guard remains down long enough to let them get a decisive advantage. But in our will they sense a weakness that could offset the margin of safety our other strengths give us. The Soviets know their multiplication tables. Looking at Sir Robert Thompson's equation, national power equals manpower plus applied resources,
times
will, they understand that if the will factor is zero the whole equation is zero.