calls âa miniature international Communist brigade, including âvolunteersâ from West Germanyâs terrorist underground.â
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 âwars of liberation.â 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 Zedongâs guerrilla forces in order to fight the Japanese invaders between 1937 and 1945, Titoâs forces to fight the Nazis during World War II, and Ho Chi Minhâs 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:âDangling 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.â The Vietcong had ordered everyone in the village to witness the execution. âThey started with the baby and then slowly worked their way up to the elder children, to the wife, andfinally to the chief himself. . . . It was all done very coolly, as much an act of war as firing an anti-aircraft gun.â He noted that this was no isolated case: âIt became routine. . . . Because it became routine to us, we didnât report it over and over again. We reported the unusual, like My Lai.â
This is how the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong won the hearts and minds of the rural populationâby 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 Clineâa former CIA official now with Georgetown Universityâpoints 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 âinternational troublemaking systemâ 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
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