The latest attacks on American Embassies throughout the world remind older readers of the very late 1970’s when U.S. embassies in Kabul, Tehran were overrun by Islamists while Cuba exported its militancy throughout west Africa and Central America. It was a time of American decline, where American allies throughout the world questioned both American political resolve and its reach to grapple with an expansive nuclear atheist Marxism. Absolutely no one was prepared to witness the rise of Reagan, Thatcher, Wjoltya and untold numbers of faceless, voiceless people dubbed “the power of the powerless” by Vaclav Havel. Unaligned were literally hundreds of millions of humans “unaccounted for” by liberal media. Reagan and Wjoltya implicitly knew that Christian fortitude underwrote those huddled masses; the appeal that characterized freedom for the American founding never left the heart of man.
The question(s) animating recent events throughout the Near East require a clarity of insight not found in most contemporary media, most certainly not television. Only print media can grasp the requisite insight unlocking the confounding impact the Islamists seek.
What we are witnessing in the display of manipulated outrage and misplaced fury is an organized political effort by militant Islamists to displace American hegemony.
Why?
Because the Islamists, not the billions of suffering Muslims that sought and continue to seek reform that has become the Arab Spring; remain the most organized seeking the revolutionary overthrow of secular rulers. Rulers that rule kleptocracies! What we are witnessing throughout the land of Arabia is impotence and rage unmoored from any display of civil society. A totalitarian grasp distinct from the peaceful mass protests that characterize the Arab Spring. We are witnessing a concerted effort by Islamists to garner support and mobilize their base by exacerbating anti-western sentiment. All under the cover of an appeal to piety.
Husain Haqqani said it best when he reported that “Islamists stoke resentment of the West, and anger over the long decline of Muslim influence, only to serve their own violent ends.”
Does the west have another Reagan or Wjoltya? Time is running out. My guess is this election will align the interests of the west to fortify the humanist desire that underwrote the need for Arabic reform. No matter what, elections have consequences!
William Holland
William Holland 