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PAGE 12
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MAY 13, 1986
is unreasonable for America to object to this policy of
dependence, but if that is the course that Europe chooses, it
must develop strategic power commensurate with the scope of its
political and economic interests•••• As it becomes clear that
Western Europe has no reciprocal obligations to the United
J �� ates, America's willingness to maintain its commitment to
l__..::
efend the Europeans is bound to diminish.
Quaddafi's Vision
With regard to what Mu'arnrnar Qaddafi might do next, a
profile of the Libyan leader in the April 21 TIME magazine indicates he
will be moved by little else than force:
fi�
the movie reel of his imagination, he sees himself standing
I
alone in the desert, a farsighted prophet of Islam and the
mighty creator of the Great Arab Nation, stretching from the
warm Persian Gulf to the dark Atlantic Ocean--a nation that
would eclipse the West in power and glory and purity•••• He has
become the modern-day incarnation of the Society of Assassins,
SH11T£f
which flourished from the 11th to the 13th century in the
Middle East, only his victims are random and spread over the
entire map. The primary tool of his effort to achieve Islamic
unity and the elimination of Israel is terrorism.
Gaddafi
regards himself not only asthe last great hope of pan-Islam
but as the scourge of the West, which he fervently believes has
humiliated the Arab world for centuries. It is a humiliation
he intends to avenge.
Although Gaddafi is often described as a madman•••there is a
contorted yet intent philosophical underpinning to his actions
and ideology.
His madness has method in it--indeed, his
apparent madness is a method•••• He revels when those in the
West denounce him as a devil;
it only confirms the
righteousness of his cause••••
Terrorism and the support of "revolutionary movements" are
tenets of Gaddafi's foreign policy.
Gaddafi in fact seems
hardly to have met a terrorist he didn't like--or support. In
addition to funding the radical fringes of Palestinian
organizations, his hand and pocketbook have been seen behind
Colombia's M-19 guerrillas, the Irish Republican Army and anti
Turkish Armenian terrorist groups. He offered sanctuary to the
three surviving members of the Black September guerrillas who
slaughtered eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Garnes.
Gaddafi has turned Libya into a kind of Palm Springs for
despots and terrorists; he once provided a home for Idi Amin,
as well as a safe haven for the Palestinian radical Abu Nidal,
who allegedly masterminded the Rome and Vienna airport
massacres.
Although CheJ •••describes the U.S. and the Soviet Union as
equally egregious imperialists, Gaddafi has made Libya into a
Soviet military client, albeit one that even the Kremlin has
trouble controlling. The Soviets are his principal supplier of
•