MARXIST EDUCATION AND THE WAR ON TERROR

 

 

 

By Beverly Eakman
March 20, 2004
NewsWithViews.com

I don�t often get into foreign policy issues, but today is an exception. As most people know by now, Spain�s conservative Prime Minister, Jos� Maria Aznar, was defeated in a surprise upset immediately following the terrorist attacks on Madrid�s subway trains. The winner instead was socialist Jos� Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who probably rightly accused Mr. Aznar of deliberately deflecting suspicion from al-Qaeda as the mastermind behind the attacks. The conservative party no doubt feared that its support of the United States in the Iraq War would turn voters against Mr. Aznar in the wake of such a devastating attack.

The leaders of al-Qaeda knew the psychology of their targets well. And now that they have succeeded in changing one country�s leadership by initiating terrorist attacks, they will surely try it again.

There is a lesson here for the entire free world, but especially for the United States, which has stubbornly refused, in the face of irrefutable evidence, to concede the deleterious effect of UNESCO�s, and other, Marxist-based incursions into not only our own education system, but into school curriculums worldwide.

What does education - Marxist or not - have to do with the Spanish vote and/or the war in Iraq?

Quite a bit, actually. Education in the Marxist-socialist vein has always been more about attitudes, values and feelings (technically called �affective� education) than about substance, proficiency or academics. Through UNESCO, which has influenced schools globally since 1947, educators have been delivering the appeasement-�peacenik� mantra to two generations of young people, many of whom of course are now voters. Courses in logic, rhetoric, debate, philosophy and other courses that focus on mental discipline and reason have been stripped away. �Fluff� classes, such as those in women�s studies, sexology, and scientifically questionable environmental studies, have taken their places, injecting large doses of radicalism and propaganda along with their psychological thrust. Testing has increasingly included a plethora of psychological, personality and political questions, while those of a scholarly and intellectual nature have diminished or been �dumbed down.�

So, while al-Qaeda leaders may be described more as religious zealots and anarchists than Marxists, men like Osama bin Laden, himself the product of a wealthy family and a good education, are not so dumb as to overlook the fact that today�s voters in the �Westernized� target countries think with their emotions instead of their rational minds - or that the populations of free-world nations are essentially soft and unaccustomed to displays of backbone. Vomiting teddy bears and flowers at the site of the latest atrocity, while heart-warming, is not the same as standing on principle for something important.

If Spanish voters had been thinking rationally, they might have wondered, upon hearing about a tape in which al-Qaeda called the attacks retribution for Spain�s support of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, just why Iraq was of so much interest to al-Qaeda. If the tape had said the attack was al-Qaeda�s answer for Afghanistan, the connection would have been obvious. If they had cited �a war against Islam� - even though that is not technically correct - one might concede the point from their perspective, given al-Queda�s radical brand of Islam. If they had used the term �war on terror,� even that would have been generic enough to circumvent the question. But they said Iraq. So, a logical person has to ask: �Exactly how much contact and what kind of collusion has there been between al-Qaeda and the former government of Iraq?� Maybe, just maybe, we are in the right place, after all.

There are other questions that should occur irrespective of one�s views on the Iraq War: What kind of message does the successful ouster of a regime in Spain send to terrorists elsewhere? Not just from al-Qaeda terrorists, but any kind of terrorists, or even �wannabe� terrorists? How successful has the strategy of appeasement been at any time, anywhere in history? And, of course, what kind of track record has the United Nations had in peacemaking anywhere in the world?

Voters in Spain, like most voters in the United States, were raised on a diet of �conflict resolution,� in which all the players are moral equivalents who bring to the table only their differing perspective. In the wake of Columbine and copycat atrocities, of course, Americans have rediscovered the fact that bullies exist, and that they don�t care about bringing anything to the table. Undeterred, educators expect psychological counseling to do the trick.

They, and the entire mental health industry, are oblivious to the fact that individuals like Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri, bin Laden�s right-hand man and personal doctor, is a psychiatrist, not a mere surgeon, and that he therefore has all the psychiatric training he needs - including a working knowledge of conditioning and drugging techniques, to alter the personality and sanity of his followers and supporters. Likewise, Ali A. Mohamed, the Egyptian psychologist and army officer who pleaded guilty to his role in the American embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, was a top al-Qaeda motivational leader and trainer. In addition to his bomb-making expertise, Mohamed taught his charges to masquerade as �average� Americans and (in his own words) �create cell structures that could be used for operations.� He was a master double-agent (he graduated from the elite U.S. Army Special Forces school for foreign officers in Fort Bragg, North Carolina) who penned dozens of training manuals on terror for al-Qaeda.

No, some people don�t want to bring their grievances to a peace table. Nor are they �mentally ill.� Their �sickness� is one of spirit. They have not lost their mind, they have lost their conscience. And for that reason, such individuals and groups must be stopped - by force, if necessary. There is no choice. It�s a matter of self-defense.

As Baby Boomers worldwide approach their senior years, they have passed along - inadvertently, in some cases - an irresponsible and even deadly legacy of non-reason. They have internalized the psycho-political message of appeasement passed along to them by UNESCO and its Marxist cohorts.

This mind-set carries long-term ramifications, not only for the War on Terror, vis-�-vis the Western nations and al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and so on, but in policies and initiatives much closer to home. Gay �marriage,� removal of religion under the banner of the Establishment clause, school voucher programs, illegal alien amnesty and dozens of other issues wedded to the security of our society and the longevity of our Constitution are being debated in a logical framework that looks like Swiss cheese. The arguments are full of holes; the reasoning seemingly devoid of any perception of cause-and-effect. The masses read or listen to one paragraph concerning the issues of the day and imagine themselves �informed.� There is little or no attempt to find out what the other side, especially the conservative side, actually says - because it tends to be too difficult, screened out or censored as it is by the �mainstream� media. So, the public settles for what they believe the other side says, as gleaned through the filter of the liberal-leftist press.

Unfortunately, this is not a phenomenon peculiar to the United States. It is a global phenomenon, bequeathed to Westernized nations largely through UNESCO. UNESCO was established with a joint grant in 1947 from the Carnegie Foundation and ultra-left National Education Association. Remember them? The folks who ruined our schools, promoted anarchy, gave us social engineering, dubbed homeschoolers �child-abusers,� and condemned serious learning? Well, now we have something else to thank them for - the success of terrorism.

What goes around, comes around.

� 2004 Beverly Eakman - All Rights Reserved

Sign Up For Free E-Mail Alerts