Post by Email Submitter on May 1, 2008 15:48:35 GMT -5
From an article on Discover the Networks
The lessons of history are not readily learned, and the past, as a result, is slated for an endless revival. The seeds of the contemporary opposition to the War on Terror were sown in the 1960s in the movement to oppose the Communist aggression in Vietnam. Once again the universities and the intellectual culture provided the most dependable support in the West for the totalitarian agendas of the Communist bloc. The withdrawal of American aid to the anti-Communist forces in Cambodia and Vietnam in 1975 (long after American forces had been removed) resulted in the slaughter of two and a half million peasants in Indo-China at the hands of the Communist victors. The blood of these innocents would not have been shed without the aid the Communists received from their supporters and appeasers in the anti-Vietnam movement in the West.
Now the West is engaged in a new war with a totalitarian enemy called radical Islam, which despises Western capitalism and democracies. And once again, totalitarianism finds its most dependable allies on college faculties. This time, the enemy does not offer lofty visions of utopia nor rallying cries of “self-determination,” nor a promise to revenge past national grievances. The jihadists of Radical Islam simply offer unmitigated hatred of the “Great Satan,” the United States. For the academic left, that is enough. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is a sufficient logic to cement the alliance.
On university campuses across the U.S., tenured radicals teach their students that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” and that America is “the world’s greatest terrorist state.” The Middle East Studies Association and more than 200 “Peace Studies” programs share the view that America’s terrorist enemies are in fact the voice of the world’s “oppressed,” and that by challenging the United States they are advancing the cause of “social justice.” Nor is the activity of these faculty radicals confined to academic theory. On every major American campus, radical professors are busily organizing anti-American “teach-ins” and demonstrations against the war, and providing their students with academic credit for joining the radical cause.
The lessons of history are not readily learned, and the past, as a result, is slated for an endless revival. The seeds of the contemporary opposition to the War on Terror were sown in the 1960s in the movement to oppose the Communist aggression in Vietnam. Once again the universities and the intellectual culture provided the most dependable support in the West for the totalitarian agendas of the Communist bloc. The withdrawal of American aid to the anti-Communist forces in Cambodia and Vietnam in 1975 (long after American forces had been removed) resulted in the slaughter of two and a half million peasants in Indo-China at the hands of the Communist victors. The blood of these innocents would not have been shed without the aid the Communists received from their supporters and appeasers in the anti-Vietnam movement in the West.
Now the West is engaged in a new war with a totalitarian enemy called radical Islam, which despises Western capitalism and democracies. And once again, totalitarianism finds its most dependable allies on college faculties. This time, the enemy does not offer lofty visions of utopia nor rallying cries of “self-determination,” nor a promise to revenge past national grievances. The jihadists of Radical Islam simply offer unmitigated hatred of the “Great Satan,” the United States. For the academic left, that is enough. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is a sufficient logic to cement the alliance.
On university campuses across the U.S., tenured radicals teach their students that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” and that America is “the world’s greatest terrorist state.” The Middle East Studies Association and more than 200 “Peace Studies” programs share the view that America’s terrorist enemies are in fact the voice of the world’s “oppressed,” and that by challenging the United States they are advancing the cause of “social justice.” Nor is the activity of these faculty radicals confined to academic theory. On every major American campus, radical professors are busily organizing anti-American “teach-ins” and demonstrations against the war, and providing their students with academic credit for joining the radical cause.