threatened Zitate

On the need to respond to the crisis in Greece, and broaching the subject of the Truman Doctrine ("it must be the policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures.") with Congress: "In the past eighteen months, I said, Soviet pressure on the Straits, on Iran, and on northern Greece had brought the Balkans to the

point where a highly possible Soviet breakthrough might open three continents to Soviet penetration. Like apples in a barrel infected by one rotten one, the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and all to the east. It would also carry infection to Africa through Asia Minor and Egypt, and to Europe through Italy and France, already threatened by the strongest domestic Communist parties in Western

Europe. The Soviet Union was playing one of the greatest gambles in history at minimal cost. It did not need to will all the possibilities. Even one or two offered immense gains. We and we alone were in a position to break up the play. These were the stakes that British withdrawal from the eastern Mediterranean offered to an eager and ruthless opponent."

Before condemning violence (physical force) as a means of social control, note that its threatened or actual use is widely practiced and respected—at least when applied successfully on a national scale. Julius Caesar conquered Gaul and was honored by the Romans; had he simply roughed up the local residents, he would have been damned as a gangster. Alexander the Great, who conquered the Near

East, was not regarded by the Greeks as a ruffian, nor was Charlemagne after he conquered Europe. Europeans acquired and divided—and redivided—America by force. Lenin is not regarded in Russia as a subversive. Nor is Spain’s Franco, Cuba’s Castro, Nigeria’s Gowon, Uganda’s Amin, China’s Mao, our George Washington.

This too is a truth well known to everyone who has taken even a slight hold of culture, that freedom is an honorable thing, and slavery a disgraceful thing, and that honorable things are associated with good men and disgraceful things with bad men. Hence, it clearly follows that no person of true worth is a slave, though threatened by a host of claimants who produce contracts to prove their

ownership.

We are told [that the West is threatened by] the terrorist threat of Islamic jihadism. Again, opinion is perfectly manipulated on the subject. Jihadism is merely the inevitable product of the triad's continued support of reactionary political Islam inspired and financed by Gulf Wahhabism. The exercise of this so-called Islamic power is the best guarantee of the total destruction of the ability of

societies in the region to resist the dictates of liberal globalization. At the same time, it offers the best pretext for giving the appearance of legitimacy to the NATO's interventions.

Muslim fundamentalists have toppled governments and either assassinated or threatened the enemies of Islam with the death penalty. Similarly, Jewish fundamentalists have settled in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with the avowed intention of driving out the Arab inhabitants, using force if necessary. Thus they believe that they are paving a way for the advent of the

Messiah, which is at hand. In all its forms, fundamentalism is a fiercely reductive faith.